Scope and method of the CPSI project

The CPSI (Changing Perceptions of Security and Interventions) project, funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (Security Research) addresses security, its determinants, and measures designed to improve security. The goal of the present project is to provide end-users, in the form of for example, governments, law enforcement agencies and emergency services, with a methodology to increase insight into the determinants of actual and perceived security, and into which interventions are effective for increasing actual and perceived security. The results of this project represent practical and ready-to-use tools, which can be employed by policy makers, strategy developers and other end-users, to formulate policy regarding security.

CPSI project video

We will focus on security issues related to the commission of crimes such as breaking and entering, pickpocketing, assault, and vandalism. Security related to threats to public health or other types of security risks, such as large-scale terrorism, fall outside the scope of the present project. The methodologies developed in the present project, though, can also be implemented for security risks related to areas other than crime.

Security, as we address it in the present project, has two aspects:

• Actual (or objective) security. This refers to information concerning security-related events, such as the commission of crimes, becoming a victim of a crime, or the implementation of interventions designed to increase security and the effects of those interventions.

• Perceived (or subjective) security. Perceived security refers to the experience of feeling secure in subjective terms. In the present project we will integrate information regarding perceived and actual security and their determinants.

But what determines how secure we objectively are and subjectively feel? In the CPSI project, we distinguish three determinants:

• Cultural factors. Culture provides us with a filter through which we interpret what goes on around us. As this may vary from country to country, a security intervention that works in one place may not work in another. In our project, we look at cultural differences related to security. Furthermore, we provide a way to link the evolution of cultures with a way to monitor security over time.

• Public opinion. Mass media is key in determining public opinion. At the moment, the role of the media in the perception of security is not well understood. In the present project we will examine the role of the media and other information sources in determining perceived security.

• Interventions. In the present project, we inventory what is and has been used and what is known about the effects of different interventions intended to increase security. This information will be integrated with data collected on other aspects of security in order to form a more complete evaluation of interventions.

The project is divided into the following objectives:

• develop a conceptual model to describe the relationship between actual and perceived security and the determinants that influence this relationship,

• develop a methodology to collect, quantify, organize, analyse and interpret data on the factors described in the conceptual model;

• develop a data warehouse to aggregate and store data from different sources,

• conduct a validation study to test the model, methodology and data warehouse in the field.

CPSI project chart

The conceptual model will be designed using General Morphological Analysis, a method for structuring and analyzing the total set of relationships contained in multi-dimensional, non-quantifiable, problem complexes. This technique will be described in more detail later in this document, but in a nutshell, it is a method through which dimensions and characteristics can be identified in order to model problems and concepts that are otherwise too diffuse and unstructured to work with. The result of this technique is a limited set of models that represent logically and normatively acceptable combinations of key factors.

In the inventory, we will examine scientific literature and literature from the field in the area of security. Specifically, we will survey work on the dimensions identified in the morphological analysis workshops. The inventory will aid us in defining such controversial and context-bound concepts as actual and perceived security and it will provide us with an indication of the most robust determinants of security to develop our conceptual model. This workshop in combination with the results of the inventory will yield a conceptual model that will form the basis for the rest of the project. The combination of the inventory and the completion of the conceptual model are consistent with the first milestone of the project.

Central to this project is developing a methodology to collect, quantify, organize, analyse and interpret data on the factors described in the conceptual model. Our goal with the methodology is to identify methods to amass the different types of data related to security, and a procedure for integrating these data so that relevant questions can be answered. The methods used to amass data may be, for example, measurement methods, extracting data from existing sources, or scoring techniques. Subsequently, we will develop suitable methods for analyzing the data and provide guidelines for interpreting the results of the analyses.

The data warehouse is crucial to the methodology. The data warehouse is a central location in which data amassed using the methodology can be stored. From this location, it is possible to bring a degree of uniformity to data with different structures and content, thus allowing for a better comparison among the different types of information. In this way, data can be combined in complex queries in order to answer specific questions involving data from multiple sources. The input for how the form of the data warehouse (e.g. which variables will be included in the data base) will come from the methodology. For example, the variables that are available regarding information on the commission of crime will become the variables included in the data warehouse. Together, developing and defining the methodology – specifically which variables on which data will be amassed – and developing the data warehouse specifications are reflected in the second milestone.

For the validation study, one or two small but scientifically valid sample locations will be chosen from among the EU countries participating in the project. Using methods identified in the methodology we will amass data on actual security (including security interventions), perceived security, public opinion, and cultural characteristics. These data will be entered into the data warehouse from which it will be possible to extract sub-sets of data with which to conduct analyses.

We will use the data amassed in the study to validate the conceptual model, the methodology and the data warehouse. Specifically, we will test if it is possible to answer relevant security-related questions from the field using the methodology. The tools we will develop, in the form of the methodology and the data warehouse, will be able to be used by end-users to assess security at the international, national and local levels, in the same way they will be used in the validation study. These assessments will help end-users draw conclusions regarding such issues as: What are the levels of actual and perceived security in specific locations?, Which interventions work where?, and Which interventions should be implemented in which locations? One of the strong points of this project is that with our methodology it will be possible to answer these questions at the neighbourhood level, not just in abstract terms for a country as a whole.

The completion of the validation study will yield the data to fill the data warehouse. This is reflected in the third milestone.

The most important deliverables of this project are:

• A methodology to assess the different elements of the model, which will be described in detail in a handbook,

• The data warehouse to store and integrate the relevant data, from which input can be extracted to conduct the analyses,

• The results of a validation study in which the methodology and data warehouse will be put to the test.

Abstracts of the deliverables are available in the papers section.