VizWorld.com

Doug McCune tok publicly available crime data for San Francisco 2009 and extruded it into 3 dimensions like a heightfield, and mapped it onto some pretty textured maps of the city.  The result is some interesting visuals that create a type of “crime topology” of the city with some interesting results.

I love how some of the features in these maps are pretty consistent across all the crime types, like the mountain ridge along Mission St., and how some of the features only crop up in one or two of the maps. The most unique map by far is the one for prostitution (more on that further down).

via If San Francisco Crime were Elevation | Doug McCune.

Science crime

William Pottenger

A new system from Rutgers University called “Distributed Higher Order Privacy Enhanced Knowledge Discovery”, DI-HOPE-KD, aims to bridge the caps between disparate criminal investigations groups in hopes of revealing patterns and knowledge previously hidden.

Once DI-HOPE KD is fully online, the system will use enormous amounts of data from multiple sources nationwide to turn up new leads on cases. In the meantime, the Rutgers group is testing their system’s algorithms using supercomputers to simulate a distributed environment, Pottenger says. While some parts of the DI-HOPE KD system are already available, the full system is expected to come online in the next five to ten years

William Pottenger is leading the effort with help from the NSF and Homeland Security.  The main focus is developing a set of “Higher Order Learning algorithms” to mine the massive piles of input data for patterns and important nuggets, to later be handed off to human investigators.

via Feature – Finding a clue in a data-stack.

Science crime, dhs, nsf, rutgers

SpatialKey has taken the available data on San Francisco’s crime rates, available at DataSF.org, and correlated it with the 2002 HUD “Urban Renewal Area” designation (shown in red) and shown that the designated area is still a hotzone for crime.

That was almost 8 years ago, but the crime data in the image above is as recent as last week. There are of course many ways to interpret this data. It could indicate that the city is not making much progress reducing drug crimes within the Urban Renewal Area. Or it could mean that the city is actively targeting the area (which will lead to higher arrests) and that the indication of higher concentrations in the Urban Development Area is a good thing.

Their sample report is available online with much more information and statistics.

via Crime in San Francisco’s Urban Renewal Area | SpatialKey blog.

Science crime, sanfrancisco, spatialkey

A new Google Maps mashup from Mentorn Media and Cimex Media, on behalf of the BBC, maps crime-patterns as a heatmap over Oxford.

In a map, that I am happy to see is not a Google mashup, select different kinds of crime (e.g. violent crime, burglary & theft), or if you live in the area, compare different neighborhoods by postcode. The interactive also provides three animations for a week in crime – street violence, street robbery, and rowdy behavior – complemented by narration and explanation.

The map covers data from November 2007 to November 2008, and uses data from several agencies such as the Thames Valley Police, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue, Domestic Abuse Services, Ambulance Services, and more.  See it on “the truth about crime” site.

via Mapping Crime in Oxford Over Time | FlowingData.

Science crime, google, heatmap, maps, mashup, oxford

FlowingData has compiled a great list of 20 visualizations of various crime statistics.  Most of it is targeted to specific areas (a neighborhood, a city, etc) but some is more diverse like the “Flash Face” sketch artist tool.

There’s a lot of crime data. For almost every reported crime, there’s a paper or digital record of it somewhere, which means hundreds of thousands of data points – number of thefts, break-ins, assaults, and homicides as well as where and when the incidents occurred.

With all this data it’s no surprise that the NYPD (and more recently, the LAPD) took a liking to COMPSTAT, an accountability management system driven by data.

While a lot of this crime data is kept confidential to respect people’s privacy, there’s still plenty of publicly available records. Here we take a look at twenty visualization examples that explore this data.

via 20 Visualizations to Understand Crime | FlowingData.

Science crime, example, list, visualization