Projects
Geographic Profiling and Spatial Analysis: Opportunity Structure Predictive Modeling (OSPM) (RULETC)
The goal of this project was to create a prototype analysis process whereby arson, commercial robbery, and burglary locations can be predicted within a city based on a combination of both neighborhood and spatial characteristics. These risk factor scores can then be used by various organizations (police, community groups, insurance, and security agencies) to prioritize actions for risk reduction for these places.
Various community level measures known to be associated with place oriented crimes (social disorganization factors, % juvenile population, etc.) was combined with individual location specific factors known to be associated with place oriented crimes (proximity to main roads, proximity to other homes, etc..) to create a risk factor score for each structure (residential or commercial) within a community. A community database was created so that risk factors can be easily updated yearly to account for changes in the spatial structure (new commercial or residential growth, re-zoning, etc.), community characteristics (updated census data, crime data, victimization data), or changes in local action (increased police presence, environmental design changes, etc..) and new risk scores generated.
This community level planning data can be used to gather crime risk information about individual locations/structures (proximity to major roads, proximity to other commercial establishments, proximity to police stations, etc.) and then combined with census and zonal data about the community to create a risk factor for place specific crimes.
