Rigel
Definition
The commercial software implementing the CGT geographic profiling algorithm, developed by Environmental Criminology Research Inc. in Vancouver and licensed to law-enforcement agencies internationally.
- Product type
- Commercial geographic profiling software
- Algorithm
- Criminal Geographic Targeting (CGT)
- Developer
- Environmental Criminology Research Inc.
- Location
- Vancouver
Common questions
What does Rigel produce as its main output for an investigation?+
It generates a jeopardy surface, a probability map showing where the offender is statistically most likely to reside or be based, calculated from the spatial pattern of related crime locations using the CGT model.
Is Rigel a replacement for traditional investigative methods?+
No, it is a decision-support tool that narrows a search area to prioritise resources such as canvassing or database queries; it does not identify a suspect and is most useful when enough linked offences exist to reveal a spatial pattern.
Related terms
- Buffer Zone
- The area immediately around an offender's anchor point where offence probability is suppressed because the offender avoids committing crimes near recognisable locations...
- Circle Hypothesis
- David Canter and Paul Larkin's 1993 hypothesis that for marauder offenders, the anchor point falls within the circle defined by the two...
- Commuter
- An offender who travels from their anchor point into a geographically separate crime area to offend; the circle hypothesis does not reliably...
- Criminal Geographic Targeting (CGT)
- Kim Rossmo's algorithm for geographic profiling, incorporating a distance-decay function modified by a buffer-zone suppression factor; implemented commercially in the Rigel software.
- Distance Decay
- The empirical observation that the probability of an offence location decreases as distance from the offender's anchor point increases, reflecting the rising...
- Geographic Profiling
- A spatial analysis technique originally developed by Kim Rossmo that predicts the likely home or anchor point of a serial offender from...
- Jeopardy Surface
- The probability map output of geographic profiling, rendered as a colour-coded topographic display where high-probability zones for the anchor point appear in...
- Marauder
- An offender who operates radially from a fixed anchor point, committing crimes within a radius around that point and returning to it...