HEAT MAP GENERATION FOR

CRIME RATE IN AN AREA

N.E.D. University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi.

January 18, 2021

Abstract
With Crime rate increasing drastically all over the world, there must be a system to analyze these
rate in such a manner that can help enforcement agencies to analyze these efficiently which can
help for effective law enforcement and crime management. This paper proposes a framework
that proposes crime rate visualization for Karachi’s districts. The crime data is divided by the
type of crime for example the type of crime can be a Murder, Target Killing, Robbery, Gang
Rape or any other type of crime. The data is visualized using Choropleth Maps for effective
visualization over the different districts of Karachi. Choropleths will show the region with higher
concentration of crime rate through the color bar showing the crime rate with the colors as
specified. The visual crime analysis information through this visualization technique may also
help the policy-makers to gain depth knowledge about the types of crimes and the overall trend
of a particular crime over the years. This insight knowledge may result in reduction of crime rate
if the law enforcement agencies use this information efficiently

Keywords: Crime Rate, Choropleth, Data Visualization, Heat Maps.

Introduction

In this project we will analyze crime data of an area. The crime rate is increasing now-a-days in
many countries. In today’s world with such higher crime rate and brutal crime happening, there
must be some protection against this crime. Here we introduced a system by which crime rate
can be reduced. Crime data must be fed into the system. This system will analyze the crime data
and will help in reducing crime by generating a heat map on the basis of its analysis. The heat
map will indicate the rate and timings of specific crimes happening in an area so that effective
measures can be taken to prevent these crimes. Crime data will be stored in the database. Data
mining algorithm will extract information and patterns from database. Admin will enter crime
details into the system which is required for analysis. This project will help us in exploring
various techniques and methods related to data science.
Background

There is an intimate connection among neediness and violations these days. Such individuals'
reality isn't striking that crimes can be anywhere. Likely individuals, even local police are not
even mindful that a particular crime is as of now wild. Police divisions require some grave
energy examining records just to know the current crime percentage. It is perceived that they
merely recognize crime percentages each month's end. In the holistic approach of modern
innovation, necessary arrangement for keeps on progressively improving. One of the critical
needs is to decrease crime and political evasion. Police mindfulness remains the most applicable
factor that may prompt decrease of crime percentage or rapid reaction to wrongdoings. Police
office can only with significant effort imagine where or what time certain crimes habitually
occur. Information mining endures the way toward determining designs in the information.
Properly utilizing valuable information mining in crime planning can help specialists scarcely
recognize continuous crime examples and hotspots that can help in crime knowledge. The
principle objective of this examination is to build up a calculation that will produce regular
wrongdoing example and event utilizing modern geospatial analysis methods. The proposed
framework will aid police in distinguishing wrongdoing occurrence rate status. It can typically
produce crime problem area merely demonstrating the rate of crime in a zone utilizing heat map.

Study Area
Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan and the capital of the Pakistani province of Sindh. Karachi
is Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse as well as
one of Pakistan's most secular and socially liberal cities. With its location on the Arabian Sea,
Karachi serves as a transport hub, and is home to Pakistan's two largest seaports, the Port of
Karachi and Port Bin Qasim, as well as Pakistan's busiest airport, Jinnah International Airport.
Karachi was divide into 5 districts until November 2013, when a new sixth district ‘Korangi’ was
formed by splitting District Karachi East. And then again in August 2020, Sindh cabinet
approves formation of the seventh district in Karachi (Kemari District) which was formed by
splitting District West.

We’ll be working on only 4 districts of Karachi i.e. Karachi Central, Karachi South, Karachi East
and Karachi West.

Methodology

Data Collection:

Mostly the Data available on the Internet was of complete Crime Rate of Sindh and not of
Karachi’s districts specifically. We could find the districts data but it was only of Karachi’s 4
districts so decided to work on the 4 districts only for the analysis.

Maps:
For our analysis we used GeoJSON file of Karachi’s District as our map.

Software and Tools Used for Generating Heat map

1. Pandas: It is an open source library that provides high-performance, easy-to-use data

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(‘Crime_Rate.csv’)

2. Numpy: It is a powerful package for scientific computing in Python. It can be used by

3. Matplotlib: Matplotlib is one of the most popular and comprehensive Python library for
creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. It is a cross-platform library
for making 2D plots from data in arrays. It provides an object-oriented API that helps in
embedding plots in applications using Python GUI toolkits such as PyQt, WxPythonotTkinter.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

4. Folium: Folium is a Python library used for visualizing geospatial data. Folium makes it easy
to visualize data that’s been manipulated in Python on an interactive Leaflet map. It enables both
the binding of data to a map for choropleth visualizations as well as passing Vincent/Vega
visualizations as markers on the map.
import folium as f

5. GeoPandas: GeoPandas is an open source project to make working with geospatial data in
python easier. GeoPandas extends the datatypes used by pandas to allow spatial operations on
geometric types.
import geopandas as gpd

Work Flow
The figure below describes the general work flow of creating heat map from crime data of a
particular area.
Advantages

This study presents a methodology that used heat maps to identify areas of Karachi city that are
prone to crime. Crime mapping has been widely used in policing and crime prevention planning
by law enforcement agencies around the world. For large cities crime mapping is a frantic
activity as there are many different crimes happening now and then in the city producing
heavyset of crime data, which is not only hard to collect and map but also need sharp skills to
analyze the mapped data.

Heat maps are an alternative tool for crime mapping. They can also be describe as an applied
method for visualizing spatial patterns. In this method, the data is processed into a continuous
color distribution, and the heat derived from the high geographic concentration of events in or
around a particular location. They are surface density maps which can be used as an alternative
spatial analysis approach when the available data is not enough for direct hotspot analysis.

Output

Conclusion

Reports of criminal activity inherently possess many spatial characteristics that can be studied
and located on the ground. Advances in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology over
the past decade combined with a growing community of users and developers have been of great
importance to law enforcement agencies. Criminal behavior in an urban setting is readily studied
in a geographic nature thanks to modern Computer Automated Dispatch (CAD) systems and GIS
tools. These analyses are crucial to helping law enforcement understand current crime trends and
identify hotspots of criminal activity. The findings from crime analyses are also important for the
public to be aware of to ensure the highest level of safety possible to the citizens that a law
enforcement agency is tasked with protecting and serving. Findings from crime analyses should
be shared with the public in the simplest and most effective form in order to ensure the data is
understood. Like many other law enforcement agencies, Karachi Police Department logs and
posts monthly crime reports online for the public to view. However, due to the high cost of
current GIS software and a limited budget the department is not able to present the data to the
public in a user-friendly manner. Our analysis will show that large amounts of crime data can be
processed and studied then later visualized and quickly shared using Heat maps and locally
available data.

Appendices

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Division