UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science

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This one day hands on GIS-based course introduces intelligence/crime/community safety analysts and researchers to techniques for identifying and understanding hotspots and other geographic patterns of crime. It provides delegates with a comprehensive understanding of hotspots, covering analytical techniques and the theory that underpin them. The course is developed from the input that the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science provided to the US National Institute of Justice ‘Mapping Crime: Understanding Hotspots’ booklet and the Home Office Crime Reduction Unit’s ‘Focus Areas and Hotspots’ toolkit.

Comments from course delegates:
‘Excellent course – thought provoking and has given me some good new ideas’
‘Very well delivered – used our data which provided added relevance’
‘Pitched at the right level and at the right speed’
‘Very practical – this course is a must for all intelligence analysts’

Aimed at: Crime analysts, police intelligence analysts, analysts from partnerships and other agencies, neighbourhood police analysts.

Interest groups: GIS-based mapping, hotspots, statistics, crime patterns, Geographic boundary thematic mapping, Quadrat thematic mapping, Continuous surface smoothing.

Entry Requirements: At least a foundation in GIS software. The course is only suitable to users of Mapinfo, ArcView and ArcGIS.

The course components include,

• Theoretical principles for understanding hotspots: This module defines the term ‘hotspot’, explores the diagnostics of hotspots and discusses several key spatial theories that can be used to help explain why a hotspot may exist.
• Nearest neighbour and standard distance statistics for describing crime patterns – NN and SD statistics can provide a useful insight into the types of geographic patterns that exist in crime data before the data is displayed on a map. For example, these tests can be used to explore if evidence of spatial clustering exists and how dispersed the distribution is relative to other crime types or crime periods.
• Point maps – Point mapping is a common means for displaying crime events, but difficulties may arise in using this technique for understanding hotspots when handling large volumes of data or if locations of repeat events exist. This module explores the practical uses of this technique.
• Geographic boundary thematic mapping – thematic mapping of crime data, aggregated to geographical administrative boundary areas such as Census Output Areas, wards, or police beats, is a popular method for visually crime patterns. However, problems do exist with this technique that can cause misleading interpretations of where crime may be most prevalent. This can be due to freedom of choice in the different thematic range settings that are possible for displaying comparative levels of crime and from the problems associated with a concept called the Modifiable Area Unit Problem. This module demonstrates how the technique can be used, and discusses its practical application.
• Quadrat thematic mapping – Quadrat thematic mapping is a technique that uses uniform grid cells (quadrats) of a specified user width to thematically shade crime patterns. The advantages and disadvantages of this technique are explored for helping to determine and understand hotspots of crime.
• Kernel density estimation – KDE is a method that aggregates points within a specified search radius, and creates a smooth continuous surface that represents the density of events distributed across the area. This module takes the delegate through tools that can be used to generate KDE hotspot maps and discusses the technique’s application. This includes discussion on the parameter settings that are required for KDE.

Accreditation

This course is accredited with 4 points towards Chartered Geographer status. This programme is coordinated by the Association for Geographic Information with the Royal Geographical Society (and Institute of British Geographers). For more details on this continual professional development programme click here.

Course tutor: Lisa Tompson
Course cost: £395 per delegate
Contact details: Spencer Chainey, The Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, University College London, Brook House, 2-16 Torrington Place, London. WC1E 7HN. Tel: 020 3108 3126 Email: l.tompson@ucl.ac.uk

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This page last modified 9 November, 2009 by [Nic Olby]