A recent article on Feedback Loops in Wired Magazine suggests that is we “provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors.” This concept is the backbone of Crime Analysis which creates a site-specific crime feedback loop to optimize site-specific security programs.
According to the Wired article, “A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage. Second, the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage. But even compelling information is useless if we don’t know what to make of it, so we need a third stage: consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead. And finally, the fourth stage: action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.”
Quantitative feedback loops (such as Crime Analysis) and qualitative feedback loops (such as victimization or fear of crime surveys) are essential to the development of an optimized security program.