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Operational Security Analytics: My Path of Discovery

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Abstract

My life is an example of the saying, “an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” My father worked in the early days of satellite imagery and the space program. My mother retired from a very successful career at the Washington State Department of Corrections. I work in the field of geospatial predictive analytics, creating models of violent crime and terrorism. While this seems like a logical career choice for a woman raised by a rocket scientist and a parole officer, my journey was neither planned nor straightforward. I am very fortunate, though, in that I absolutely love what I do and am “living the dream” as they say.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Regarding the Wal-Mart emergency response plan, I had the opportunity to speak at the Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, and was somewhat intimidated about including this example but am very glad to say that they not only confirmed it but seemed very pleased to learn how their experience has been able to provide inspiration and method to the public safety and national security analysis community. This model works extremely well for teaching and has almost become viral in the law enforcement community. I have seen others use it in their lectures and even attended a briefing in Washington, DC, where the speaker attributed the original discovery of this relationship to the LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and my coauthor, reporting that he was collecting data on Pop-Tart sales from the local Wal-Mart stores in advance of bad weather moving into Los Angeles [10].

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Correspondence to Colleen McLaughlin McCue .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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McCue, C.M. (2012). Operational Security Analytics: My Path of Discovery. In: Gaber, M. (eds) Journeys to Data Mining. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28047-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28047-4_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28047-4

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