Crime Mapping - MPS Web-site risk of overload

The MPS Crime Mapping web site was developed after decisions had been taken to replace the servers that host the MPS Internet site. Public crime mapping was likely to significantly increase public interaction with the MPS Internet site due to the interactive nature of crime type and geographical area selection capabilities. The MPS and New Scotland Yard brands are world renowned and therefore likely to attract casual interest from search engine responses for local crime mapping. There was no possibility of increasing server capacity further prior to the launch of the crime mapping facility.

The MPS web site had experienced a number of high profile events that had led to restriction or loss of Internet service due to high demand. These events included the London bombings on 7^th July 2005, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005, Operation Overt the investigation and arrests of suspects of the liquid bomb conspiracy to murder case in August 2006, the publication of the Operation Paget inquiry report into the allegation of conspiracy to murder Diana, Princess of Wales and Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington on 14^th December 2006 etc..

In addition the public launch of the West Midlands crime -mapping site by the Home Secretary in July 2008 brought down the West Midlands Police web-site due to the demand placed upon it.

The results of the C&W/Vistorm stress test carried out against the new MPS Internet hardware on which the Crime Mapping service was to be housed revealed that there was a significant risk that the hardware would not be able to cope with the processing demands of the service if traffic was likely to exceed 250 concurrent users

Several solutions to managing levels of traffic above the current MPS hardware capacity were sought. The tender from Akamai was the only one to offer `100% availability for the mapping site no matter the load' (Akamai, 2008), so long as a link is available to the MPS site.

3^rd August 2010