Surveys of local populations: The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics has conducted a National Crime Victimization Survey since 1973. This survey asks a representative sample of the national population about the frequency, characteristics and consequences of crimes they have experienced. This survey allows the Bureau to estimate the likelihood of victimization for certain subsets of the population in given areas. Because only 90,000 households spread across the United States are surveyed each year, these statistics are too dispersed be used for targeted accuracy assessments of remotely sensed crimes. The techniques used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics may be helpful for this purpose, however. This survey uses in-person or phone interviews that are strictly confidential about the nature of victimizations, where they occurred, the victim’s thoughts as to why these crimes happened and where they happened. Using structured phone interviews in the regions surrounding the remotely sensed sites of crime might be another manner in which analysts could assess the accuracy of their analyses. Conducting such interviews would, of course, require serious attention to maintaining the security and confidentiality of respondents, 2×4 flood tray as well as the security of interviewers themselves. As we pointed out in the Introduction, different crimes occur over different spatial and temporal scales.
The different temporal and spatial scales of crime are going to impact the ways in which they can be validated. For example, crimes taking place over larger geographical areas and longer periods of time will be easier to validate. The second order validation methods we propose here together would be most useful in validating crimes occurring over longer periods of time and larger geographical areas. LBSN can, and has been, used in detecting crimes that happen rapidly and over smaller geographical areas, however. Because this is one of the first efforts in a hopefully fruitful conversation of the topic, we hope that future explorations will explore techniques that are scale specific. Maps have always been powerful tools, affecting people’s lives and livelihoods in myriad ways since their inception. Crime mapping using remote sensing technologies is becoming increasingly quotidian with increasing ease of image access and analysis. Indeed, Purdy and Leung note that despite the limitations of remote sensing technology, “it seems clear that it is going to progressively catch the attention of those in the legal sector seeking to integrate modern technologies into new monitoring approaches—particularly if such approaches can be shown to save money, offer a form of evidence collection not previously available or improve detection and compliance results”. While such technologies are increasingly important to diminishing the dark figure of crime, shedding light on crimes and criminals that otherwise would not be detected, we argue that care must be taken with this forward step.
Due to the potentially extreme and/or serious social and ecological implications of the remote sensing of crime, defining tolerable levels of error, as well as standards for accuracy assessments that incorporate contextual understandings of illegal acts is critical. We posit that by using second order modes of accuracy assessments, remote sensing analysts will both be able to validate their classifications of crimes, but will also be able to gain better and more complete information on how and in what places illicit activities are taking place, by whom and to what effect. Further, these data may help resolve some of the serious ethical and moral issues that arise from the remote sensing of crime. These accuracy assessments may also make remotely sensed crime data more serviceable in courtroom settings and law enforcement planning strategies. While we have painted a few ideas for second order accuracy assessments with a broad brush here, we hope that this paper leads to further, more detailed discussions of innovative accuracy assessments. In this work, we call for a more broad use of geospatial technology to better validate remotely sensed estimates of crime. Though the more accurate and comprehensive detection of crime is important for the protection of society, there are trade-offs between security and privacy that must be considered. We are aware of the fact that our argument here essentially is a call for more surveillance technology in everyday life, and in some cases, the second order validation methods we mention here are already being used to scrutinize the population at large, with worrying results . Here, we make the call to further open discussions about the use of surveillance/securitization technologies and the importance of transparent methods of their use to society as a whole.
As such, this paper is a part of a larger ongoing conversation about the role increased geospatial technology plays in an increasingly surveilled society. We argue that it is only once we fully understand the implications of the powerful technologies we are now able to harness and only once we have found limits to these technologies that are ethically, morally and constitutionally acceptable that we can effectively utilize them in the context of the remote sensing of crime. Though society as a whole may struggle to clearly prioritize security and privacy, a transparent debate over policing methodologies must continue as the powers of spatial technologies grow stronger. In summary, of the sixty one papers we reviewed, fifty-eight drug related and three dealing with extra-legal migration, twenty one failed to discuss accuracy assessments at all . While the remaining papers did mention accuracy assessments, twenty studies’ accuracy assessments were limited or completely curtailed by security issues . This means that only thirty four percent of all of the studies seeking to actively detect crime using remote sensing performed and described their accuracy assessment methods. We find these limitations and lack of attention to accuracy assessments highly troubling. We believe that if remote sensing continues to be used in the active detection of crime, validation of remotely sensed crime data must be rigorously validated before it is acted upon. While we recognize that first order validation is not always feasible, we have proposed second order validation techniques that may facilitate validation in difficult situations. We do, however, recognize that important trade-offs must be considered between privacy and security. We challenge other scholars to add to the conversation we have begun here to make the use of remote sensing to diminish the dark figure of crime more effective and ethically sound. In 1953, amid reports that cannabis was growing around San Mateo County, the local sheriff’s office and the UC Agricultural Extension Service in Half Moon Bay issued a booklet entitled Identify and Report Marijuana. The booklet envisioned “total eradication” of cannabis. The authors couldn’t have imagined that, in 2017, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors would pass an ordinance allowing greenhouse cultivation of cannabis in the county’s unincorporated areas. A lot can happen in 60-plus years — such as voter approval of Proposition 64, the 2016 ballot measure that altered California law to allow the recreational use of cannabis by adults. The measure’s passage presented policymakers with the challenge of regulating, licensing and taxing a large, flood and drain table complex and fast-changing recreational cannabis industry — a challenge made more acute because scientific research on many aspects of cannabis in California had never been conducted at scale. UC is now working to fill that research gap. At least nine UC research centers, most of them new, now focus entirely or in part on cannabis .
A sense of momentum has begun to suffuse cannabis research. That said, federal restrictions still inhibit many aspects of research . The $10 million in annual research funding that Proposition 64 allocated to California universities has not begun to flow, and the Bureau of Cannabis Control — the entity responsible for disbursing the money — reports that it is still establishing guidelines for doing so. Despite these obstacles, UC cannabis research in the legalization era is well underway, as attested by this special issue of California Agriculture. The research articles presented here fall into three broad categories — research into cannabis production, into the economics of the cannabis industry in California and into the social and community impacts of cannabis. The three articles focused on cannabis production include the results of the first known survey of California cannabis growers’ production practices, by Wilson et al. . In the article “Characteristics of farms applying for cannabis cultivation permits” , Schwab et al. combine data on cannabis farms with information about applications for cultivation permits, establishing that, of farms within the dataset, those seeking permits tended to be larger and to have expanded faster than other farms. And on page 146, Dillis et al. analyze data submitted to the regional water quality control board to characterize the water sources used by cannabis cultivators in the Emerald Triangle region . Articles focused on the economics of the cannabis industry include a study by Goldstein et al. analyzing online retail prices for cannabis flower and cannabis-oil cartridges as changes in regulation and taxation have taken effect in recent years. ValdesDonoso et al. analyze data from sources including California’s cannabis testing laboratories to estimate the cost per pound of testing under the state’s regulatory framework. Four articles explore the social and community impacts of cannabis production. On page 161, Valachovic et al. report the results of a survey of timberland and rangeland owners in Humboldt County, who shared their experiences with the rapid expansion of cannabis production in their region and its attendant social, economic and environmental challenges. LaChance interviewed non-cannabis farmers, ranchers and others across Humboldt, Mendocino and Sonoma counties, eliciting their views on issues such as increased land prices amid cannabis legalization. For the article “Growers say cannabis legalization excludes small growers, supports illicit markets, undermines local economies” , Bodwitch et al. surveyed cannabis growers to gain insight into their experiences with the state’s system for regulation of commercial cultivation. Finally, on page 185, Polson and PetersenRockney employed ethnographic methods to study cultivation regulations in Siskiyou County and their effects on the county’s Hmong-American community. The special issue was conceived by Van Butsic and Ted Grantham — UC Cooperative Extension specialists based at UC Berkeley — and Yana Valachovic — a UCCE forest advisor and director for Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Butsic, Grantham and Valachovic developed the issue in collaboration with Daniel Sumner, a UC Davis professor of agricultural economics and director of the UC ANR Agricultural Issues Center, and with the staff of California Agriculture. Throughout my Master degree, I always felt supported by UC Davis. There are plenty of resources for students and all the staff in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department assisted me whenever I needed help. I am so grateful to my research group, the Next Generation Networking and Computing Systems lab. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Roberto Proietti and Dr. Sandeep Singh for their help and guidance during the execution of the project. This thesis would not have been possible without the trust of Professor S.J. Ben Yoo, my major advisor who selected me for the project and provided me with access to the labs, equipment and all the necessary devices to deploy the testbed and run the experiments. I appreciate the time and dedication of the other members of my committee in charge, Professor Chen-ne Chuah and Professor Matthew Bishop, for evaluating my thesis. My parents Abel and Elda, my brother Luis Gerardo and Dr. Ricardo Prado have been a fundamental part of my life. They have been always motivating me to pursue my dreams. And finally, my friends and my family deserve an acknowledgement since they never left me alone, but they supported me and made me feel better during challenging circumstances. Thanks to all who have been part of this, I could not have achieved my Master without you. In recent years, data centers and high-performance computing systems have been adopting heterogeneous memory and processor nodes to allow scientists to run large scale experiments and achieve important advances and discoveries in fields like engineering, science, healthcare and astronomy. As of November 2021, supercomputers are closer to achieve Exascale performance . The first place is for Fugaku with 442 Pflops/s. In second place, Summit shows a performance of 148.8 Pflops/s. In the USA, the Exascale Computing Project is an effort of the US department of Energy, managed by leaders of different national laboratories. ECP’s principal mission is to accelerate the delivery of the first nation’s exascale system.