CIAC Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CIAC facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which data source would be LEAST useful for identifying a commercial robbery series? → School attendance data
2. Which structured analytical technique is specifically designed to counter confirmation bias in strategic assessments? → Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH)
3. How does spatial analysis contribute to crime pattern recognition? → Identifies high-risk locations
4. When an analyst uses open-source social media data to develop an intelligence product, which legal consideration is MOST important? → Whether collection methods comply with platform terms and applicable privacy laws
5. Which analytical technique uses geographic anchor points to estimate where a serial offender most likely lives or works? → Geographic profiling
6. Which metric best identifies the most influential 'broker' in a criminal network? → Betweenness centrality
7. The 'likelihood' component in a risk formula most commonly represents: → The probability that a specific threat will successfully exploit a vulnerability
8. Which act requires agencies to limit data collection to what is legally necessary? → Fair Information Practice Principles
9. Which software platform is most widely used by US law enforcement for link analysis and criminal network visualization? → IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook
10. What is the significance of data triangulation in crime analysis? → Cross-verifies results by combining data sources
11. A criminal network's 'key node' is best identified by its: → High degree of centrality and influence over information or resource flow
12. Which Supreme Court decision established that cell phone location data (CSLI) generally requires a warrant? → Carpenter v. United States (2018)
13. What is the primary purpose of 'choropleth mapping' in crime analysis? → To display crime rates or densities across defined geographic units using color gradients
14. A crime analyst finds that auto thefts declined in one neighborhood after a crackdown but increased in an adjacent neighborhood. This is best described as: → Crime displacement
15. In crime intelligence analysis, what does the term 'data triangulation' primarily mean? → Using multiple data sources to validate findings
16. The 'journey to crime' concept in geographic profiling refers to: → The distance and route an offender typically travels from their home base to commit crimes
17. What federal law protects the privacy of individuals’ information used in intelligence analysis? → Privacy Act of 1974
18. Which mapping technique is best suited for showing the density of crime incidents across a continuous surface rather than discrete points? → Kernel density estimation (KDE)
19. A law enforcement agency wants to share criminal intelligence with a private security firm. Under proper protocols, the MOST critical consideration is: → Whether the firm has a legitimate need and proper safeguards to protect the information
20. Which emerging technology is increasingly applied to analyze large volumes of video surveillance footage for crime intelligence purposes? → Computer vision and AI-powered video analytics
21. When conducting temporal network analysis of a criminal enterprise, analysts examine: → How the network's structure and relationships change over time
22. A crime analyst applies Bayesian inference to update the probability of a suspect's involvement as new evidence arrives. What makes this approach valuable? → It allows probabilistic estimates to be revised as additional information is collected
23. The 'anchor point theory' in geographic profiling suggests that an offender's crimes cluster around: → Significant activity nodes such as home, workplace, or social hangouts
24. What is a crime hot spot? → Location with high concentration of criminal activity
25. Which element is NOT typically used to link crimes in a behavioral-MO comparison for series identification? → Offender's height and weight estimate
26. What are the ethical considerations in data collection for crime analysis? → Ensuring privacy, confidentiality, and avoiding bias
27. What is the primary purpose of a Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system in law enforcement? → To manage and coordinate real-time emergency response and patrol unit deployment
28. When producing a crime intelligence report for patrol officers, the analyst should prioritize: → Actionable, location-specific, and time-sensitive information
29. Which GIS layer would be most useful when analyzing outdoor drug market locations in an urban environment? → Street network, lighting infrastructure, and transit stop locations
30. Which of the following is NOT typically considered an OSINT source? → Encrypted private messages obtained via wiretap