Alina Ristea
PhD. Alina Ristea is an Assistant Professor in Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on the use of spatial and spatiotemporal analysis to understand crime, disorder, and safety in urban environments. She works across environmental criminology, GIScience, urban analytics, and crime prevention, with a particular interest in how data can support better public safety decisions.
Her work examines how crime concentrates in space and time, how mobility and the built environment shape opportunities for harm, and how emerging forms of data can be used responsibly in crime analysis. She has published on crime forecasting, social media mining, urban safety, and spatial methods for understanding crime patterns. More recently, her research has also focused on women’s perceived safety, safety routing, and the development of micro-place safety indicators.
Alina has worked with academic, policing, and public safety partners, and is interested in how open geospatial data, open-source tools, and reproducible methods can strengthen crime analysis and further prevention while recognising the sensitivities of working with public safety data.
Session
Crime and safety are strongly connected to place. They are shaped by where people move, where opportunities for harm appear, where guardianship is present or absent, and how the built environment can create both risk and reassurance. For crime analysts and law enforcement, spatial data has long been central to understanding these patterns. Yet, as public safety becomes more data-driven, the question is not only what data we use, but how clearly, responsibly, and usefully we work with it.
This talk explores the role of open geospatial data, open-source software, and reproducible spatial analysis in supporting crime analysis and public safety. Drawing on examples from work on crime forecasting, micro-place analysis, mobility, open imagery, OSINT, perceived safety, and cybercrime prevention, I will discuss how open approaches can strengthen the work of analysts, researchers, law enforcement, local authorities, and communities. The talk will consider how open tools and shared methods can help us move from simple hotspot maps towards a richer understanding of when, where, and why harms emerge.
At the same time, openness in this field needs care. Crime and safety data can be sensitive, incomplete, and difficult to interpret without context. I therefore argue for an approach that is open where possible and protected where necessary: one that supports useful data sharing and transparent methods, while recognising the responsibility that comes with working on public safety.
The central message of this keynote is that open geospatial approaches can do more than describe where crime happens. They can help us understand patterns of harm, support prevention, and improve the way spatial evidence is produced, interpreted, and used in public safety practice.