Abstract

Crime Mapping, Using Python to Make Data for Training or Evaluation
Track: Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice
Authors: Andy Swift

Brentwood City police department wanted to evaluate and compare crime mapping software packages. This article will share specific techniques used in ArcGIS and arcpy python library to create simulated crime data with defined, determined, statistical properties. For example, we’ll show how to create known hot spot areas, clusters, and dependent spatial variables. Such data can then be used as an objective input to evaluate results from crime mapping software, or for training exercises.