Creating my own crime map

January 18, 2012 1:45 PM

I want to create a "crime map" of a city over time. I know the dates of the crimes, and I know the physical address. I'd like for the crime map to be something that I could show a crowd in a presentation such that the audience members could witness for themselves how a particular part of the city changed as time went on. I was thinking of Gapminder as the ideal, but spatially and dynamic instead of simply numbers. I suppose it'd be possible to get something up and going with GIS, but I was wanting to do it in a way that was idiot-proof as this is only valuable to me if I can do it easily without a ton of time learning some new program.
posted by scunning to Science & Nature (3 answers total)

Google Fusion Tables can do something like this.

If you want to get slicker with it, you may want to use something like MapBox. Haven't used it myself, don't know what it entails, but it looks pretty slick and hassle free if you have GIS data.
posted by ofthestrait at 1:57 PM on January 18, 2012

Best answer: This might not be kosher because this is the company I work for, but if you have a CSV or a data source on the web you can just feed it into Rhiza Insight. It will just inhale your file, geocode the addresses, and display them on a Google Map. You can sort by date and make different map snapshots temporally if you want to show changes over time. You can also make dynamic charts by date on the same dataset.

You can MeMail me if you need any help getting started.
posted by Alison at 3:26 PM on January 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Depiction is a mapping program designed to show things interactively over time. It is used for disaster preperation and management, but there are university teachers who use it for crime data in their colleges. It may do what you want.

Depiction
posted by markblasco at 8:19 PM on January 18, 2012