Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Visual Time Geographic Approach to Crime Mapping

近年来，随着计算机技术的发展，使用数字测绘来探索和分析犯罪空间的情况大大增加。发现热点，犯罪网络，流动和调查线索已成为研究人员和从业人员应用犯罪地图的共同目标。虽然一些犯罪已被证明很容易用传统的映射方法表示，但其他犯罪已被证明很难用这种映射表示。对于某些类型的犯罪（例如在地铁上抢劫或身份盗窃），犯罪者和受害者进出犯罪空间的流动性对简单地图作为表示模式的可用性提出了挑战。 由于这些犯罪事件在空间和时间上的流动方式，它们无法通过犯罪者与受害者互动的单一点来表示。这些类型的犯罪事件需要一种新的方法来绘制犯罪空间。因此，本博士研究调查的可用性的方法来映射犯罪，结合空间和时间的视觉帐户的受害者和罪犯的流动性下的事件相关的限制（例如，可访问犯罪现场）。本研究的三个主要目的是：1）描绘三种不同类型的犯罪事件场景并分析其时空背景; 2）基于三种犯罪场景创建犯罪时空地图;和3）以评估这些罪案地图在实际和研究用途上的可用性。使用地理资讯系统和相关的绘图技术，可促进执法工作和研究，理解，分析和解决犯罪的空间方面。 对于执法人员来说，能够将与其案件有关的时空数据可视化，应证明是很有价值的。 由于这些从业人员能够更好地利用创新的调查工具，社会将受益于更有效的执法系统。这项研究也有助于紧迫的科学问题，因为研究人员正在努力用各种方法将地理现象表示为跨时间和空间发生的真实的事件，而不是在单一地点。为了应对这些挑战，该项目研究了犯罪制图背景下制图时空方法的操作方面。 最后，作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项加强了一个强大的独立研究人员的学术生涯开始。

The use of digital mapping for exploring and analyzing the spaces of crime has grown considerably in recent years, jointly with the growth of computing technologies. Uncovering hotspots, criminal networks, flows, and investigative leads have become common goals in the application of crime mapping by both researchers and practitioners. While some crimes have proven easily represented by conventional methods of mapping, other crimes have proven quite difficult to represent with this kind of mapping. For some types of crime (e.g. mugging while on the subway or identity theft), the mobility of both offenders and victims moving in and out of the spaces of crime challenges the usability of a simple map as a mode of representation. Because of the itinerant way in which these crime events occur across space and time, they defy representation by the location of a single point of offender-victim interaction. These types of crime events require a novel approach to mapping crime spaces. Therefore, this doctoral research investigates the usability of an approach to mapping crime that combines space and time for a visual account of both victim and offender mobility under event-related constraints (e.g. accessibility to a crime scene). The three key objectives of this research are: 1) to depict three different kinds of crime event scenarios and analyze their space-time context; 2) to create space-time crime maps based on the three crime scenarios; and 3) to assess the usability of these crime maps for practical and research purposes.The use of geographic information systems and related mapping technologies facilitates law enforcement practice and research in understanding, analyzing, and addressing the spatial aspects of crime. For law enforcement practitioners the ability to visualize space-time data related to their cases should prove valuable. As these practitioners are better able to utilize innovative investigative tools, society will benefit by having more effective law enforcement systems. This research also contributes to pressing scientific questions as researchers struggle with various methods of representing geographic phenomena as real events that occur across time and space, rather than at single locations. To meet these challenges, this project examines the operational aspects of a space-time approach to mapping in the context of crime mapping. Finally, as a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award reinforces the beginning academic career of a strong independent researcher.