Community variations in hoax calls and suspicious fires: Geographic, temporal and socio-economic dimensions and trajectories

This is a project supported by a grant from the Criminology Research Grants. The views expressed are the responsibility of the author and are not necessarily those of the Council. Descriptive mapping and analysis of malicious hoax calls 38 Descriptive mapping and analysis of suspicious fires 46 Summary of descriptive mapping and analysis 53 Understanding the dynamics of suspicious fires and malicious hoax calls The present project seeks to better understand the spatial dynamics of suspicious fires and malicious hoax calls across Queensland. Currently an extensive body of empirical research considers the psychological motivations and disorders related to fire setting behaviour. Not surprisingly policy and prevention initiatives also focus on individual behaviours or predispositions. While some studies are beginning to consider the spatial and environmental characteristics where fires occur, the current project is the first to examine fire incidents over such a large geographic area (State of Queensland) and time period (13 years). In so doing it makes central the spaces in which malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires occur and how these incidents in these spaces change over time. This research aims to examine and capture the spatial and temporal patterning of malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires across Queensland. It takes a longitudinal approach examining the geographical trajectories of malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires over time. This project aims to identify changing patterns of malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires over time by categorising changes into persistent, transient or emergent spatial concentrations. Further it identifies the most salient socioeconomic characteristics of spatial areas that predict the occurrence and spatial patterning of malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires. Methodology This project employed three analytic techniques to examine the spatial dynamics of malicious hoax calls and suspicious fires over time: (1) cluster mapping; (2) geographically weighted regression, and; (3) trajectory modelling. These techniques required an integrated data file which was a major undertaking of the project. The sources necessary to conduct this study included Queensland Fire and Rescue Service incident data across 13 years and key variables drawn from the 1996, 2001, and 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Censuses that were concorded to 2006 Census boundaries. Our cluster mapping analyses employed spatial autocorrelation statistics across time to examine the correlations among spatial areas in relation to fire incidents and to identify clusters or 'hot spots' of fire incidents. The second approach utilised geographically weighted regression to analyse spatial …