Abstract

Predicting Burglary Crime Incidents through Line of Sight Analysis
Track: Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice
Authors: Solmaz Amiri, Kerry Brooks

The study of how spatial configuration of urban environments influences human perception and behavior has a long history in the fields of perception psychology and urban studies. Human perception is influenced by visibility; therefore, research and practice desire to expand visualization techniques to study perception and the extent to which visual fields influence human behavior. Different visualization techniques have been developed for analyzing the qualities of urban configuration and its relation to social factors. This study employs line-of-sight-analysis and other tools available in the ArcGIS 3D Analyst to, first quantify Jane Jacobs' notion of eyes upon the street and to then compare natural surveillance intensity to residential burglaries. Geo-referenced oblique imagery, site surveys and police reports constitute primary sources of data for this study. Results will depict how much of the variance in residential burglary crime rate can be predicted by natural surveillance and which spatial configurations are less criminogenic.