Banksy: Geographic profiling 'proves' artist really is Robin Gunningham.

“Geographic profiling”, a technique used to catch serial criminals, has proved that the elusive artist Banksy really is Robin Gunningham, according to academic research.

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London claim to have “tagged” Banksy, by identifying a pattern between the locations where his graffiti artworks most frequently appear and addresses with a close association to Gunningham, named as Banksy in a 2008 newspaper investigation.

The secretive street artist was the unwilling subject of a statistical “geoprofile.” The research was delayed after Banksy’s lawyers contacted the university with concerns over how the study, titled Tagging Banksy, would be promoted.

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The researchers, who published a paper about their work in the Journal of Spacial Science, mapped the latitudes and longitudes of 140 of Banksy’s works in England. They then used a forensic technique developed to identify potential suspects in cases of serial rape, arson and murder. It basically consists of looking to see if the crimes cluster around particular geographical hotspots.

The researchers employed a cheat though. They went into this project looking to prove that a man named Robin Gunningham, who had previously been identified as a Banksy candidate in the Daily Mail, was indeed him. So they were looking to see if their analysis would cluster around his known past addresses. In an “ethical note” at the bottom of the paper, the researchers say they only included in the paper the roads of Gunningham’s past addresses that are “already in the public domain.” But one privacy experts still considered the study unethical.

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