A new website is using crowd sourcing to log incidents of graffiti, and forwarding the reports to the appropriate authorities for cleaning up.
The site, http://www.vandaltrak.com.au/, asks the community to submit photos of graffiti and to pinpoint the location of the incident on a map. It then uses the location data to determine under whose jurisdiction the clean-up falls and forwards the report to the appropriate group.
The data is also held in a database that will help in convicting the perpetrator if they get caught.
This isn’t the first instance of a graffiti database: we wrote about the Queensland Police Service and Brisbane City Council’s joint initiative to battle graffiti in the August/September 2010 issue of Position Magazine.
However, this website differs from that project, as it’s independently run and asks the community, rather than officers, to log incidents.
It is hoped that by more aggressively pursuing offenders, it will deter people from participating in the activity in the future.
