A research presentation by Wittenberg University students won second place at a regional meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG).Seniors Philip Mielke of Greenfield, Ind., Pamela Broughton of Amelia, Ohio, and Clinton Cooper of Grover Hill, Ohio, were honored at the annual meeting AAG’s East Lakes/West Lakes Division held at Miami University, Oct. 19-21.
They received the award for their presentation “Crime Data Management A GIS Approach,” which grew out of a spring semester class project in collaboration with the Springfield (Ohio) Police Department.
According to Olga Medvedkov, professor of geography, who taught the spring course, the students analyzed three years of crime records to plot trends and patterns by area or time of day in ways not easily visualized using other techniques. Large numbers of individual incidents were “geocoded” by computer that can then graphically project patterns of criminal activity on a map. The work created a visual representation of crime that confirmed the factors reported by law enforcement officers.
Such geographic modeling shows great promise for crime prevention as well as for social service agencies, city planners and architects to design communities and allocate resources, Medvedkov said.