Crime analysis is too complex a subject to be done using one software. Most crime incidences have space and time lags that make geographic or temporal analysis inadequate (e.g. crime hot spots "migrate" when public policy is local but ineffectual: something known in the field as "diffusion").
Having said that, the best way to perform space time analysis of crime is to use statistical software like WinBUGS (Bayesian stats) based on R and S languages. Then use Maptitude to map the results. Rudy B. Maptitude 5.0 TransCAD 4.8 Transmodeler 1.0 On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 9:32 AM, dr_haspel <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I concur with Marcelo. Maptitude can do some of the functions in a crime > analyst's toolkit (i.e. convex hulls, minimum spanning circles, and basic > density grids). But CrimeStat does much more, and it is both FREE and > well-documented. But as Marcelo notes, you'll still need a GIS (Maptitude, > ArcGIS, MapInfo...) to display the CrimeStat output. > > I've used the CrimeStat/Maptitude pairing few times myself, though usually > to look at things other than crime. Still, I can report that Maptitude opens > CrimeStat-generated shapefiles without a hitch. For example, this map shows > the spread of the foreclosure crisis (foreclosure notice filings) in Atlanta > http://www2.urban.org/nnip/subprime/animated.gif -- the maps were created > in Maptitude, the graphs were created in Stata, and the whole thing was sewn > up into an animated gif using imagemagick. > > > --- In [email protected] <Maptitude%40yahoogroups.com>, "Marcelo > Luna" <tc...@...> wrote: > > > > Mike, > > > > I think that, for crime analysis, CrimeStats (freeware) is the proper > tool > > to use ( <http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/CrimeStat/> > > http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/CrimeStat/). But it doesn't have a graphical > > interface, so you could use Maptitude as a geographical database and > > visualization tool. CrimeStats manual is very detailed and a great source > to > > learn spatial analysis or spatial statistics. > > > > > > > > I use a old copy of TransCad (Maptitude's big brother for transportation > > analysis) and many Crimestats tools would be useful if implemented in > > Maptitude/TransCAD. Recently, I used it to do a basic traffic accident > > analysis finding the accidents hotspots using the nearest neighbor > > clustering technique and kernel density functions. I used Crimestat to > > process the data stored in TransCAD and then TransCAD was used to present > > the results of CrimeStats with thematic maps. > > > > > > > > Best regards, > > > > Marcelo Luna. > > > > > -- Aniruddha Banerjee, Ph.D.
