Project Introduction:


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Outline

Crime rates in the Lower Mainland have a large impact on every memeber of society. Whether it taxes the capacity of police forces, overwhelms the ability of the court systems to process the incidents, or pulls huge amounts of tax dollars from the governments and insurance companies, crime is a very real problem that needs to be analyzed.
With the help of GIS software there are numerous avenues of research and analysis that may help determine some of the causes of crime. This study will look at several important factors that may directly or indirectly influence crime rate numbers. Some of these factors include total populations, total numbers of police force members, unemployment numbers and general socio-economic indicators such as income levels. Data includes information from 1996 and 2002 from the districts and municipalities of the Lower Mainland and GVRD areas.
This project is aimed at finding relationships between the various factors that may influence crime rates. Through the manipulation of statistical and spatial data these factors may or may not present themselves.

Background Research

My project focuses on crime rates in the GVRD and attempts to analyze the cause of crime by looking at several possible contributing factors. A time analysis over a six year period from 1996-2002 will focus on crime rates in relation to population totals and police strength totals. The number of law enforcement members working in each municipality will play the largest role in analyzing crime rates, with less emphasis being placed on other constituents such as population numbers and socio-economic conditions of the various municipalities.

This project is important to understand for a number of reasons that may apply to each and every member of the GVRD. Criminal activity has an effect on everyone, either directly or indirectly, which is why this project is important to understand. It can apply to a large number of people and provide information that may be influential in future policy making decisions made in relation to crime rates. Some possible examples may include increasing the number of existing police members in specific ‘high-risk’ municipalities or educating the general public on what factors may cause crime in certain areas.

Design  

When I first started thinking about the projects overall design I wanted to be able to show why crime rates were more concentrated in certain areas than others. For the most part, my data consisted of tabular spreadsheets that needed to be imported into IDRISI to be able to manipulate. It was at this point that I realized it was going to be difficult to define a multi criteria evaluation within IDRISI. I was able to produce several maps of the lower mainland and GVRD areas, displaying many of the criteria that I believe are related to crime. However my project data sets did not allow me to fully take advantage of the IDRISI software program. Instead I was able to produce a series of maps that were able to visually display some of the factors that may contribute to high crime rates. Because my data sets were compiled from 1996 and 2002, the maps produced were able to show a time line history of the changes that occurred in the variables selected.