Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/pittsburgh2007/index.html
The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data analysis techniques have become prominent tools for analyzing criminal behavior and the impacts of the criminal justice system on society. Classical and spatial statistics have been merged to form more comprehensive approaches in understanding social problems from research and practical standpoints. These methods allow for the measurement of proximity effects on places by neighboring areas that lead to a multi-dimensional and less static understanding of factors that contribute to or repel crime across space.
The Ninth Crime Mapping Research Conference will focus on the use and development of methodologies for practitioners and researchers. The MAPS Program is anticipating the selection of key accepted presentations for further development of an electronic monograph on GIS, Spatial Data Analysis and the Study of Crime in the following year. Its purpose will be to demonstrate the fusing of classical and spatial analysis techniques to enhance policy decisions. Methods should not be limited to the use of classical and spatial statistics but also demonstrate the unique capabilities of GIS in preparing, categorizing and visualization of data for analysis.
The Crime Mapping Research Conference is about more than mapping crime locations. Participants will discuss a range of issues including policy decisions, research methods to identify and dispel hot spots, and other applied practice solutions. The conference is about the study of society and elements of mapping technology that contribute to both crime and justice.
Conference presentations and proceedings now available.
The conference will include workshop and panel sessions, as well as some plenary sessions. One plenary session will be about the “Coming Wave of GPS”. The conference also includes a Map competition, Pre-conference workshops, and provides an excellent opportunity for researchers and practitioners to network with each other.
From All Points Blog
University of Southern California students developed the online game for the Annenburg Center for Communications to teach about the challenges (and partisanness) of redistricting. Along the way players learn that to keep their candidates elected they may need to examine ethical issues. The game is Flash-based.
From the [original News 10] site: The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting. Currently, the political system in most states allows the state legislators themselves to draw the lines. This system is subject to a wide range of abuses and manipulations that encourage incumbents to draw districts which protect their seats rather than risk an open contest.
From O'Reilly Radar:
ACM GIS 2007 CFP Extended
Posted: 12 Jun 2007 11:46 AM CDT
By Brady Forrest
The 2007 ACM International Symposium on Advances in GIS will be in Seattle from November 7th to the 9th. As they describe themselves:
The ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems in 2007 (ACM GIS 2007) is the fifteenth event of a series of symposia and workshops that began in 1993 with the aim of bringing together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners carrying out research and development in novel systems based on geo-spatial data and knowledge, and fostering interdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of geographic information systems. The symposium provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of GIS and ranging from applications, user interface considerations, and visualization down to storage management and indexing issues. This year, a novelty is that ACM GIS has separated from its long-time host conference in order to become independent and more visible to the GIS community, further expand the spectrum of research topics covered by the symposium, and grow over the next years.
If this looks like something you would like to be a part of the deadline for submitting papers has been extended. The program from last year looks very academic. I wonder if reaching out through blogs (like this one) if they'll get some more real world talks. The topics (after the jump) are wide-ranging and quite fascinating (no wonder both Microsoft and Google are sponsoring). I'll be looking at the proceedings to get ideas and speakers for Where 2.0 2008.
Once again, O'Reilly's Radar tips us to a fine posting related to JAGIS (Journalism and GIS), this one regarding the challenge of generating change-over-time in urban areas.
Stamen's Map for Trulia
Posted: 12 Jun 2007 12:22 AM CDT
Trulia's new Hindsight Map is a beautiful, animated visualization of the development history of US cities and towns. With it, you can watch entire towns and cities grow. In Seattle, you can watch the city grow starting in year 1900. Trulia is a real estate search engine (much like Zillow). Stamen Design, known for their work on CabSpotting and in Digg Labs, built the map for Trulia using their new Flash mapping library, Modest Maps. Tom Carden and Shawn Allen of Stamen released and demoed Hindsight at Where 2.0.
Tom sent me the following notes on Hindsight and Modest Maps:
Time has been one of the missing dimensions in online maps, but recently it has become a common thing to add. Outside.in (Radar post) recently added the fourth dimension with their ability to track geographic stories over time. Google Earth (info) added the ability to “play” GPS traces. Hindsight really has me wondering about the applications of time-phased maps beyond analysis. In situations like Katrina (See Mikel Maron's post on the maps of Katrina) and the Maze Meltdown (See SF Chronicle article on the Maze) where there are rapid changes to roads this would especially helpful. To get your mind around changes, you need to be able to compare. I wonder if we can expect this to come from the major portals.
A recent post from the FreeGis group at Google. Looks to be a fine solution to a decade-old challenge. ————— Free Toolbar available from the TerraGo download link. MAP2PDF provides an easy to use and affordable solution for distributing GIS data to non-GIS users. By leveraging Adobe Acrobat, GeoPDF as portable mapping format, allows for the creation and publishing of layered Georegistered maps that can be accessed at no cost by non-GIS users. – Sat 9 Jun 2007 15:21 1 message, 1 author http://groups.google.com/group/freeGIS/t/9672fdc5d31e958b
Picking up some interesting Web 2.0 tools at the IRE's annual conference, this year in Phoenix.
The Programmableweb.com www.programmableweb.com/ Good jumpstation for APIs, Mashups, How-To info, etc. CityCon — www.tetonpost.com/citycon/ “CityCon allows you to find detailed information about any member of the current 110th U.S. Congress. Use the Input field above to query the CityCon database and the Internet for a U.S. City, State, Senator or Representative.” Maplight.org — www.maplight.org/ “MAPLight.org brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics. We currently cover the California Legislature and U.S.”
So the NYT did backtrack on the percent-of-change error described yesterday without assigning blame. That's fine. But the correction suggests another big story that we have only seen parts of. That is, of all the U.S. presence in Iraq — military and contractors — how many and what proportion are actually on the streets and how many and in what capacity are in support categories.
This weekend, friend-of-the-IAJ Joe Traub sent the following to the editor of the New York Times. Here's the story Joe is talking about: “White House….“
The headline error is bad enough (it's only in the hed, not not in the story) — and should be a huge embarrassment to the NYT. But the error gets compounded because while the Times no longer sets the agenda for the national discussion, it is still thought of (by most?) as the paper of record. Consequently, as other colleagues have pointed out, the reduction percentage gets picked up by other journalists who don't bother to do the math (or who cannot do the math.) See, for example: * CBS News — “Troop Retreat In '08?” — (This video has a shot of the NYT story even though the percentage is not mentioned. Could it be that the TV folks don't think viewers can do the arithmetic?)(NB: We could not yet find on the NPR site the transcript of the radio story that picked up the 50 percent error. But run a Google search with “cut in Troops by 50%” and note the huge number of bloggers who also went with the story without doing the math.)Colleague Steve Doig has queried the reporter of the piece, David Sanger, asking if the mistake is that of the NYT or the White House. No answer yet received, but Doig later commented: “Sanger's story did talk about reducing brigades from 20 to 10. That's how they'll justify the “50% reduction” headline, I guess, despite the clear reference higher up to cutting 146,000 troops to 100,000.”
Either way, it is a serious blunder of a fundamental sort on an issue most grave. It should have been caught, but then most journalists are WORD people and only word people, we guess.
We would also point out the illogical construction that the NYT uses consistently in relaying statistical change over time. To wit: “… could lower troop levels by the midst of the 2008 presidential election to roughly 100,000, from about 146,000…” We wince.
English is read from left to right. Most English calendars and horizontal timelines are read from left to right. When writing about statistical change, the same convention should be followed: oldest dates and data precedes newest or future dates and data. Therefore, this should best be written: “…could lower troop levels from about 146,000 to roughly 100,000 by the midst of the 2008 presidential election.”
Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/geocommons_shar.html
GeoCommons, Share Your GeoData
Posted: 23 May 2007 01:59 PM CDT
GeoCommons is a new mapping site that allows members to use a variety of datasets to create their own maps. It provides the free geodata, a map builder tool,the ability to create heat maps, and a map hosting site. An API will be available shortly. GeoCommons comes from FortiusOne, a Washington, D.C. company. The public Beta is going to be releasedWhere 2.0's launchpad. Monday, May 28th, at Where 2.0's launchpad.
When building a map you can use one of the 1500 data sets (with 2 billion data attributes) that they have made freely available. The data sets vary widely and include things like “Identity Theft 2006”, “Coral Reef Bleaching – Worldwide”, “Starbucks Locations – Worldwide”, and “HAZUS – Seattle, WA – Resident Demographics”. As you can see below, data can be viewed in a tabular format prior to loading it onto a map. Data sets can be combined together so that you can see “The Prices of Living in NYC & SF” and “Barack vs. Clinton – Show Me the Money! ” — it seems to me that Barack has more widespread support.
