A user-centered approach for designing and developing spatiotemporal crime analysis tools

Crime analysis describes the systematic collection, preparation, interpretation, and dissemination of information about criminal activity to support the mission of law enforcement (Boba 2005). Leading theories on the sociology of crime emphasize the importance of geography (Shaw and McKay 1942; Cohen and Felson 1979; Sampson and Groves 1989), as the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of a community illuminate the etiology of crime (Cahill and Mulligan 2007) and past spatial patterns of crime are useful in predicting future incidents (Chainey, Tompson, and Uhlig 2008). Researchers in crime analysis recently have called for increased application of GIScience techniques to the domain of law enforcement (Getis et al. 2000; O'Shea and Nicholls 2003; Wilson 2007), particularly emphasizing the importance of developing statistical and visual techniques that support analysis of criminal activity in both space and time (Ratcliffe 2009). Despite the potential for GIScience techniques to identify and explicate clusters and trends in crime, many police departments lack adequate analytical tools and training to explore and make sense of their crime incident datasets. This concern is particularly poignant in medium to small municipalities that are unlikely to have dedicated crime analysts on staff (Harries 1999). Here, we introduce GeoVISTA CrimeViz, a web-based map application that supports spatiotemporal exploration and sensemaking of criminal activity. The GeoVISTA CrimeViz concept provides understaffed departments with an extensible, easy-to-use tool for conducting spatiotemporal crime analysis and mapping. We are currently in the process of completing a user-centered approach to ensure that the tool 'works' for its intended audience; a description of this approach and work in progress is provided in the following subsections.