Curbing domestic violence: instantiating C–K theory with formal concept analysis and emergent self‐organizing maps

We propose a human‐centred process for knowledge discovery from unstructured text that makes use of formal concept analysis and emergent self‐organizing maps. The knowledge discovery process is conceptualized and interpreted as successive iterations through the concept–knowledge (C–K) theory design square. To illustrate its effectiveness, we report on a real‐life case study of using the process at the Amsterdam–Amstelland police in the Netherlands aimed at distilling concepts to identify domestic violence from the unstructured text in actual police reports. The case study allows us to show how the process was not only able to uncover the nature of a phenomenon such as domestic violence, but also enabled analysts to identify many types of anomaly in the practice of policing. We will illustrate how the insights obtained from this exercise resulted in major improvements in the management of domestic violence cases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.