Results of a Survey of Crime Analysts

We have recently conducted a survey of ~30 eminent crime analysts from the UK and USA (as well as one person in Sweden!). The survey presented six maps which demonstrated some of the potential uses of geospatial data for crime analysts and asked the experts to give us their opinion on what they found useful/interesting about each of the new data sources.

 As an example, the figure left shows estimates of road traffic volume that were produced by looking at the structure of the local road network (using OS MasterMap data) and comparing this to occurrences of residential burglary. Analysts were asked whether they were familiar with this type of analysis, whether it would be useful for them to be able to easily access this type of data (or not) and how we might improve it.

The responses were extremely comprehensive and will be very useful in helping us to make sure that the products we produce will actually be useful to practitioners.