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...

Using GIS to Manage the Redlands Bicycle Classic

This is Marilyn Dreuker's MSGIS Major Individual Project from 2003.

For 19 years, the City of Redlands has been hosting the Redlands Bicycle
Classic which is considered one of the most fun races in the U. S. by some
cyclists. This national event has endured longer than any other cycling event in
the U. S. For 6 days, this professional cyclistsí race takes place not only in
Redlands, but also in the cities of Riverside, Highland, and Yucaipa. The race in
April 2003 had almost 250 riders covering a total distance of approximately 348
miles for the menís races and 280 miles for the womenís races. There were nearly
1000 volunteers and an estimate of 50,000 spectators. (Oberjuerge 2003).
There is no question that credit for the raceís success has to be given to the
race committee, made up of the Redlandsí community and the police department.
Their well-organized efforts to run things smoothly makes the race enjoyable for
everyone. But to plan such a big event as the Bicycle Classic, especially
managing the number of people involved and the associated problems, takes a
great deal of time and effort. Everyone would benefit if there is a more efficient,
easier way to manage security, spectators, traffic, and road closures when planning
for this type of event.
This project addresses a better way to solve this planning problem by using
GIS to integrate the data, visually display the information on maps and perform
visual and spatial analysis of the integrated data sets. Using GIS, the police
department can improve the effectiveness of the planning by displaying the
integrated data on a map to see where problems have occurred or are likely to
occur. Visual or spatial analysis can help with planning the logistics of the event,
planning for security and medical emergencies, easing traffic problems, and
maintaining order.
This report communicates how GIS can be used as a tool to help with the
planning and implementation tasks. It begins by looking at other GIS applications
that relate to this activity. It then provides a concise look at the goals, scope and
objectives of this project and specifies the design, development and analysis that
were taken to address the issues. The report contains the products that will be
delivered to the client ñ the Redlands Police Department. Finally, conclusions and
recommendations for further study are provided.

Entire pdf located here (94 pgs)

Using ESRI’s Districting Tool in Policing

From the Geography and Public Safety Bulletin



Environmental Systems Research Institute’s
(ESRI) districting tool1 is a free extension
for ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop that allows analysts
to create new police districts in a city or region.
The redistricting tool initially was designed to
help governments draw congressional district
lines or create school districts, but has been
co-opted to help police departments outline
new beats. It helps them draw boundaries
and review the outcomes (e.g., predict new
workloads and crime rates) for the new districts.
The tool provides summary statistics for every
boundary selection. It does not automatically
create districts from preexisting data; rather, it
can be used to aid police communication and
make geographic information systems (GIS) a
central part of the redistricting process.
Preparing the Data
The ESRI districting tool requires an agency
to have GIS data entered as a polygon feature
class2 with attribute data. These polygons must
be smaller than the intended districts. Analysts
should use polygons that coincide with naturally
occurring boundaries and main thoroughfares.
Police departments must divide a city or region
into discrete boundaries to balance service and
distribute responsibilities into organizational
branches. This task requires departments to join
years of incident data (the point feature class)
to the chosen polygon feature class. This helps
ensure that a proportional number of incidents
is allotted to each geographic region.
The process of joining incident data to
polygons in ArcGIS to achieve a count of
incidents in each region is the same process that
an analyst would use to create a choropleth3
map that depicts different incident counts. To
join incident data to a polygon feature class, an
analyst should do the following:
1. Right-click the polygon layer...
(More Here)