Robert P. Trost

Principle Investigator on proposal submitted in 2009 through CNA to National Institute of Justice (NIJ) on “Crime Early Warning System (CEWS)”:

 

The purpose of the proposed research is to field test a crime early warning system (CEWS) for serious crimes based on time series forecasting. Officers and staff members of modern police departments already know current crime hot spots in their jurisdictions and common time series patterns such as time trends and seasonal variations. The objective of CEWS is to provide critical new information; namely, to forecast large step increases in serious crimes that otherwise would come as surprises. Past research funded by NIJ developed and validated a leading-indicator crime forecast model for this purpose using historical police data from two cities—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Rochester, New York. The research showed that the models are able to forecast large increases in serious crimes adequately based on recent past increases of leading-indicator crimes. The proposed research will take the next step and use experiments, in partnership with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), to determine if crime forecasting and hot spot interventions can prevent increases in serious crimes.  

Expert Consultant on proposal submitted in 2009 through CNA to National Institute of Justice (NIJ on “Improving the Criminal Justice System: Prosecution and Defense - Enhancing DNA Case Processing and Efficiency”:

This proposal addresses collaboration problems among the police, prosecutors and crime laboratories in the handling of violent crime cases involving DNA evidence, and tests the hypothesis that specific interventions aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system by expediting the processing of high-priority DNA cases and improving case clearance rates.

 

Three grant proposals on solar energy were submitted to the George Washington University (GWU) Institute for Analysis of Solar Energy. Co-PI on these grant submissions. One grant was funded.

 

Three grant proposals submitted to NSF. Two on Terrorism and one on the Chinese Military. PI on all three of these grant submissions.