How emergent self organizing maps can help counter domestic violence

Topographic maps are an appealing exploratory
instrument for discovering new knowledge from
databases. During the past years, new types of Self
Organizing Maps (SOM) were introduced in the
literature, including the recent Emergent SOM. The
ESOM is used to study a large set of police reports
describing a whole range of violent incidents that
occurred during the year 2007 in the police region
Amsterdam-Amstelland (the Netherlands). It is
demonstrated that it provides an exploratory search
instrument for examining unstructured text in police
reports. First, it is shown how the ESOM was used to
discover a whole range of new features that better
distinguish domestic from non-domestic violence cases.
Then, it is demonstrated how this resulted in a
significant improvement in classification accuracy.
Finally, the ESOM is showcased as a powerful
instrument for the domain expert interested in an indepth
investigation of the nature and scope of domestic violence