UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research

Tompson, L., Johnson, S., Ashby, M. ORCID: 0000-0003-4201-9239, Perkins, C. and Edwards, P., 2015. UK open source crime data: accuracy and possibilities for research. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 42 (2), pp. 97-111. ISSN 1523-0406

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Abstract

In the United Kingdom, since 2011 data regarding individual police recorded crimes have been made openly available to the public via the police.uk website. To protect the location privacy of victims these data are obfuscated using geomasking techniques to reduce their spatial accuracy. This paper examines the spatial accuracy of the police.uk data to determine at what level(s) of spatial resolution – if any – it is suitable for analysis in the context of theory testing and falsification, evaluation research, or crime analysis. Police.uk data are compared to police recorded data for one large metropolitan Police Force and spatial accuracy is quantified for four different levels of geography across five crime types. Hypotheses regarding systematic errors are tested using appropriate statistical approaches, including methods of maximum likelihood. Finally, a “best-fit” statistical model is presented to explain the error as well as to develop a model that can correct it. The implications of the findings for researchers using the police.uk data for spatial analysis are discussed.

Item Type: Journal article
Description: Special issue: crime mapping.
Publication Title: Cartography and Geographic Information Science
Creators: Tompson, L., Johnson, S., Ashby, M., Perkins, C. and Edwards, P.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society
Date: 2015
Volume: 42
Number: 2
ISSN: 1523-0406
Identifiers:
NumberType
10.1080/15230406.2014.972456DOI
Rights: © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.
Divisions: Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by: EPrints Services
Date Added: 09 Oct 2015 11:17
Last Modified: 09 Jun 2017 13:55
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25672

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