LA Times notices geocoding problem for LA's crime Mapping

On Monday it was a grand theft auto and two robberies, on Tuesday two more robberies and four aggravated assaults. By Friday the toll had risen to 39 major crimes.

And, according to the Los Angeles Police Department's website, that week late last month was pretty typical of the mayhem around the corner from City Hall.

Since the inception of the LAPD's online crime map three years ago, the 200 block of West 1st Street has consistently shown up as the most likely place in Los Angeles to be victimized by crime.

.... More here-

Quantitative School Bus Stop Risk Assessment of Redlands, California

This was a Major Individual Project for the University of Redlands working with Claiborn Lewis Phillips in 2005.


















The purpose of this Major Individual Project (MIP) was to identify public school bus
stops in the city of Redlands with certain risks. Those risks being violent crimes, drug
related crimes and the homes of convicted sex offenders. The MIP made use of the
Kernel density function along with the Getis-Ord Hotspot function in ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.1
software. These functions were both used alone and combined. The Kernel Density
function was used alone to derive a density surface that would be reclassified to produce
a risk surface that would identify the risk of the school bus stops. The Hot Spot Analysis
(Getis-Ord Gi*) with and without (z-score) Rendering were use in combination with the
Kernel Density function. The pairing of these two functions, Kernel density and Hot
Spot Analysis, was utilized to produce surfaces that would act as visual aids to better
identify hot and cold spots. These surfaces were generated by using the Hot Spot
Analysis functions to compute the Getis-Ord Gi* (with and without rendering) values.
Those values were then used as the Population field for the Kernel density function that
produced Hot Spot/Kernel density surface. These results were used to produce maps to
aid police officers, and school officials and produce an IMS site to inform the parents of
the community.

The project paper can be found here...

GIS Project Proposal #2 MSGIS

Why do this project?
The City of Redlands is an average-sized city that is rapidly becoming a representative example of ESRI’s market base. For this reason, Redlands stands to be the model city for the adoption of GIS technology. GIS has been a part of the police department’s regular business process since the mid 90’s, and there are two crime analysts and a database technician that will be available to facilitate your success with this project.

The City of Redlands holds an enterprise GIS license and is also a user of the Omega Group’s CrimeView, one of ESRI’s most active business partners. There is an explicit need for this project, and there is a culture of acceptance and data sharing with the Redlands Police Department and the City of Redlands. Here is your chance to work with an emerging field of GIS.

There are two very attractive features to partnering with us:
1. We are close enough to meet with frequently.
2. Your client has been through the U of Redlands MSGIS program, and understands what
the MIP process entails. Scope creep will be minimized and we’ll tailor your project to suit
your needs and interests.

20 Years of Crime
Crime analysis units work with pieces of data at a time.
Windows of time. Some procedures group incidents by the
most recent set of a week; some procedures compare one
month to the previous month; some compare 3 recent
months to the previous 3 months. This is a different
approach.

The Redlands Police Department has 20 years of geocoded crime
data, and there have been some changes over the
years. There are 2 sets of Census data available to correlate
values to (1990 and 2000). There may also be a possible
preliminary 2010 Census data set available.
Population has changed. Landuse has changed.
The infinite set of human variables are constantly changing what
is the effect?

Product
There is flexibility for what the data-product will entail.
The MIP and presentation will be the final deliverable, and
ideally we would like to see animations that depict the
changes that have occured over time. We can assist in the
development of these animations.
Support for your MIP will include regular access to our
network and our staff. For this reason, a light background
check will be necessary.

Geography & Public Safety: Using ModelBuilder for Geographic Information System Tasks

This was published in the National Institute of Justice's Geography and Public Safety Bulletin:


Crime analysis requires a Geographic Information System (GIS)—a software program for capturing, managing, and analyzing geographic and spatial data—to process data and create data products (e.g., printed maps, pamphlets) for a wide audience. Crime data can change daily, which makes producing maps and other products a daunting task for many analysts. Automating regular tasks will save time and allow for more sophisticated tools for analysis. Crime analysts need a mapping program that allows them to regularly update data in a timely fashion. Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) ModelBuilder is a component of a type of ArcMap that allows for drag-and-drop development of complex geoprocessing tasks (e.g., placing points on the map based on addresses, summarizing data). It helps crime analysts expedite their daily geoprocessing tasks for map production.

Advancing Earlier Modeling Tools

ESRI’s ModelBuilder is a drag-and-drop process modeling environment that comes standard with ArcMap version 9.x. ModelBuilder is an advancement of ArcView 3.x’s Geoprocessing Wizard Extension. Where the Geoprocessing Wizard was limited to tasks like spatially joining, merging, and clipping data, ESRI introduces all of ArcMap’s functional capabilities (e.g., spatial analysis, geoprocessing) into the Toolbox. A large number of different tools and tasks can be strung together in the literal sense of a systems technology: data go in, a process occurs, and data come out. The potential to string complex tasks together and automate them to run regularly makes ModelBuilder an attractive option for any Crime Analysis Unit.

The rest of the article, and a series of other articles can be found at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/gpsBulletin-2008v1.pdf.pdf