{"id":301,"date":"2013-11-08T16:28:06","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T21:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homepages.uc.edu\/~yaozo\/wordpress\/?p=301"},"modified":"2013-11-08T16:28:06","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T21:28:06","slug":"integrating-arcgis-and-google-earth-for-crime-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/2013\/11\/08\/integrating-arcgis-and-google-earth-for-crime-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"INTEGRATING ARCGIS AND GOOGLE EARTH FOR CRIME ANALYSIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY ERIC PIMPLER<\/a>\u00a0GOOGLE EARTH<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2019m going to be taking a slightly different approach in this post than I have in previous posts.\u00a0 Typically, GeoChalkboard focuses on providing how-to information regarding the use of ESRI, Google Earth\/Maps, and other geospatial technologies.\u00a0 As such we normally provide very detailed instructions regarding how to use certain aspects of these software technologies.\u00a0 However, in this post I\u2019m going to describe at a higher-level the output of a crime analysis project I recently completed for\u00a0Texas State University<\/a>. \u00a0My intent is to expose you to some of the possibilities for integrating these technologies in a way that takes advantage of the advanced analysis and visualization techniques that are possible. Based on some of my previous posts you can probably tell that I\u2019m particularly interested in the integration of ArcGIS Desktop with Google Earth.\u00a0 In my opinion, this is a great combination for analyzing and presenting spatial data.\u00a0 ArcGIS at the desktop level is a fantastic tool for analyzing and modeling spatial data, and Google Earth provides a visualization platform that is second to none.\u00a0 By combining these two products you can provide not only advanced analysis techniques, but also present compelling visualizations of the resulting data.<\/p>\n

Overview
\n<\/strong>Dr. Tina Cade<\/a>\u00a0in the Horticulture Department at Texas State University approached\u00a0GeoSpatial Training Services\u00a0<\/a>regarding the use of geospatial technology for determining the effect of community gardens on crime rates in the areas surrounding these small plots of land that are gardened by a group of people.\u00a0 Community gardens have many benefits to both the human and natural environment including neighborhood beautification, social interaction, and as a catalyst for neighborhood development.\u00a0 Get more information on community gardens\u00a0here<\/a>. This particular project was interested in the effect that these community gardens would have on crime rates in the surrounding areas in the Houston, Texas urban area.<\/p>\n

Project Methodology
\n<\/strong>The application of geospatial technology to this project had both analysis and visualization components.\u00a0 A number of statistical techniques were used to measure the effectiveness of community gardens in deterring crime, and ArcGIS was used to create various datasets that were used in the statistical analysis.\u00a0 However, I\u2019m not going to focus on these aspects of the project in this post, but will instead focus on the techniques employed in the visualization component of the project.\u00a0 These techniques, carried out by using a combination of ArcGIS, Spatial Analyst, Arc2Earth, and Google Earth provided a strong combination of tools to generate and visualize crime data in Houston, and can be used as a general platform for many projects across a wide variety of industries.\u00a0 For visualization purposes, the study called for the creation of raster based crime \u201cheat-maps\u201d based on \u00bc mile cell size along with 3D views of the same data.<\/p>\n

Data Sources
\n<\/strong>The primary sources of data for this study were address level crimes for the year 2005 as provided by the Houston Police Department and the addresses of all community gardens in the Houston area.\u00a0 Crime data at the address level had already been geocoded into a shapefile format.\u00a0 Community garden data was also geocoded to a street level. We were primarily interested in the neighborhood level effect that community gardens would have on crime rates so the study areas for each community garden were relatively small (1\/4 mile and 2 mile radii).<\/p>\n

Creating the Heat-Maps
\n<\/strong>For visualization purposes, the study called for the creation of various heat-maps that would enhance the visualization of crime data in Houston.\u00a0 To accomplish this we used a combination of ArcInfo with the Spatial Analyst Extension, Arc2Earth, and Google Earth.\u00a0 Using our geocoded crime data, a series of raster grids were created by crime type using Spatial Analyst using a \u00bc mile grid size. We then symbolized the resulting grid surface in ArcGIS and exported as an image overlay using Arc2Earth.\u00a0\u00a0Arc2Earth<\/a>\u00a0is an ArcGIS extension that can be used to export your GIS format data into a KML file for visualization by Google Earth.\u00a0 Here are some examples of the resulting Google Earth format crime heat-maps.\u00a0 This particular map shows burglary hot spots for the City of Houston in relation to community garden locations surrounded by a 2 mile radius (circles).<\/p>\n

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Creating 3D Maps
\n<\/strong>In addition to the heat-maps we also wanted to be able to visualize the data in 3D.\u00a0 To accomplish this we used ArcGIS to drape a vector fish-net composed of \u00bc mile grids on the City of Houston.\u00a0 Next, we used a spatial join in ArcGIS to count the number of crimes by type in each grid.\u00a0 We used the resulting field as an elevation value in Arc2Earth to export the 3D screenshots that you see below.<\/p>\n

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More Information
\n<\/strong>For more information on integrating ArcGIS and Google Earth please consider our \u201cIntegrating ArcGIS Desktop and Google Earth<\/a>\u201d virtual training course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY ERIC PIMPLER\u00a0GOOGLE EARTH \u2019m going to be taking a slightly different approach in this post than I have in previous posts.\u00a0 Typically, GeoChalkboard focuses… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcgis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zhuoyao.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}