Exploring local crimes – part 2

I thought you would be interested in some new features that I’ve just introduced in my local crimes demonstrator.

They are:

• A map legend, showing the range of total crimes in the selected area, and map.
• Maps of the numbers of crimes in 1 kilometre squares within a Local Authority
• Individual crimes (on the map) are colour by type of crime, so that the colours now match those shown in the pie and ward distribution charts.

Mapping total crimes in 1 kilometre squares

You’ll have spotted from my previous blog post that I started by mapping total numbers of crimes within wards in a given district council.   This is important from a local democracy and accountability perspective: i.e. wards have elected councillors,  who will no doubt be engaged with partners in addressing crimes in their areas.

It should also give you the opportunity to find out what your local councillor, and council is doing about crime in your area: which begs the obvious question – where do I find a national, maintained, and open (free to use) database of elected councillors?

However,  ward maps do not necessarily provide a rounded picture of local crime.  For instance, we cannot see whether crime in a ward is concentrated in a particular location, and we cannot see crime patterns across ward boundaries. In essence, I wanted a way of showing crime “hotspots” within and between ward areas.

My solution is to essentially to “chop up” the local authority into 1 kilometer squares, then count numbers of crimes in each square according to the location data from data.police.uk.

Here’s an example for Lincoln council.  

You can switch between the ward and 1 kilometre square maps by clicking the button highlighted in red above.  Note that the legend will automatically change to show the maximum and minimum number of crimes in areas on the selected map.

Mapping individual crimes

As in the previous version,  you can map individual crimes by clicking on a ward, and then hitting the “Map them!” button next to the pie chart.

This will display individual crimes within the selected ward, with markers colour coded by crime category.  You can also hover over each marker to get more information.

Here’s an example, again from Lincoln, showing crimes mapped on to ward and 1 kilometer squares.

I hope you enjoy these new features.  This remains a work in progress, so please do let me know if you find any bugs or have ideas for further new features.

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