London Crime Maps Beta Released
The Metropolitan Police in London has released a Google Maps Mashup under http://maps.met.police.uk displaying the distribution of London crime rates.
The maps show the amount of incidents (in some occasions even vandalism and graffitis) per 1000 inhabitants and in certain locations, the map can be zoomed all the way down to street level. The maps will be updated on monthly basis.
The idea is to roll this service out for all England and Wales by the end of the year.
The question is now, what impact do such maps have on the local house prices. Does my rent drop if I put a graffiti up on the other side of the street? Who knows…
on August 19th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I don’t think your rent would drop. Your house price might though you never know. On that side of London, it’d be considered ART. I’m not even sure graffiti is counted as a crime by the Met. A better question might be how do these maps affect the public perception of crime and how dangerous an area is. You might have new ghettos springing around London if people are loath to move to an area because of what a map says.
From an academic point of view; it’d be really interesting to see which crimes occur the most in certain areas. Im sure there’ll be a few surprises in the stats.
on August 26th, 2008 at 11:36 am
this stuff just *screams* for a iPhone application!
I’m working on it…