Firearms Analysis System

The Firearms Analysis System integrates information from local police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the National Tracing Center to provide detailed information and analysis of firearms used in local crimes.

Client: Department of Justice - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF); Philadelphia Police Department

Challenge: Crime involving firearms is a serious public safety and health concern. While the ATF operates a National Tracing Center, the transmission of trace requests was a paper-based process, requiring several manual steps. Further, the results were also sent on paper, preventing analysis of trends and patterns in the use and distribution of crime guns.

Solution: Avencia developed the Firearms Analysis System (FAS) to reduce the amount of time required to trace a firearm seized in a crime and to provide greater analytical ability to look at all such crime guns seized in Philadelphia. The FAS serves both as a workflow / data entry system and as a mapping, charting, search, and reporting system. The mapping capabilities of FAS include interactive maps for guns seized in a particular period of time; the pathway of a firearm across the country from manufacture to use in a crime; link maps of residence location to crime location; and thematic maps by manufacturer, importer, caliber, type, and crime class.

Outcomes: Since its use in production, the FAS has catalogued and transmitted 5,000 firearms per year, dramatically increasing the speed with which trace results are returned to the officers requesting them and providing an important intelligence resource for both the Philadelphia Police Department and the ATF.

Publications:
Federal GIS Connections