LOCIS: Liquor Outlet Compliance Information Service

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Alcohol consumption by youth has serious negative consequences including, but not limited to, violence, injurious or fatal accidents, unwanted pregnancies, and reduced school or job performance. A well-known and large-scale strategy for preventing sale of alcoholic beverages to underage purchasers, and thereby consumption, is to conduct compliance checks that identify and hold accountable retail establishments that do sell or otherwise provide alcohol to minors. The proposed innovation, the Liquor Outlet Compliance Information Service (LOCIS), offers a new analytic tool capable of supporting both public agencies responsible for enforcement of underage drinking laws and to communities and other stakeholders who are vested in their enforcement. LOCIS will be a fast, user-friendly, interactive, web-based software application that provides business analytics and public reporting related to compliance check patrol activity and enforcement outcomes. The application integrates state-of-the-art Geographic Information System (GIS) technology with online analytic web services offering users the ability to search for and analyze information via a map-based interface. Using LOCIS, agency and public stakeholders can a) locate and obtain outlet-specific information on compliance check and violation history, b) quickly observe and evaluate geographic patterns in compliance check activity and violations, and c) overlay other contextual data using a map-based locator or more traditional data record query. LOCIS will be marketed as a hosted service to which state or local organizations may subscribe, combining data integration, analysis, presentation, and dissemination in a zero-footprint computing solution. Phase I aims to prove the feasibility, evaluate the usability of the product, and develop the Compliance Patrol Manager (CPM). Activities include enhancing an existing prototype to accommodate multiple clients, engage government and community stakeholders for product guidance and iterative review, identify and integrate additional contextual data that can be overlayed with compliance check information, and conduct a usability test. The secure, non-public CPM will generate equitable and efficient compliance patrol activity using scheduling algorithms that account for manageable travel time and distance, past violation history, and officer availability. The unique parameters for the algorithm will be discovered from meetings with knowledgeable informants from the relevant agencies and then coded. Phase II work will enroll one or more pilot customers, improve usability and efficiency based on Phase I findings, modify infrastructure to accommodate increased web traffic, integrate the CPM into LOCIS, and evaluate the impact of access to LOCIS on compliance patrol behavior, alcohol outlet response, and youth alcohol consumption.