Understanding the spatial distribution of crime based on its related variables using geospatial discriminative patterns

Crime tends to cluster geographically. This has led to the wide usage of hotspot analysis to identify and visualize crime. Accurately identified crime hotspots can greatly benefit the public by creating accurate threat visualizations, more efficiently allocating police resources, and predicting crime. Yet existing mapping methods usually identify hotspots without considering the underlying correlates of crime. In this study, we introduce a spatial data mining framework to study crime hotspots through their related variables. We use Geospatial Discriminative Patterns (GDPatterns) to capture the significant difference between two classes (hotspots and normal areas) in a geo-spatial dataset. Utilizing GDPatterns, we develop a novel model—Hotspot Optimization Tool (HOT)—to improve the identification of crime hotspots. Finally, based on a similarity measure, we group GDPattern clusters and visualize the distribution and characteristics of crime related variables. We evaluate our approach using a real world dataset collected from a northeast city in the United States. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.