Louisville Metro Partnership: Crime Incidents Map

The city of Louisville Metro has partnered with our government open data services and mapping company GovMapper to bring a daily crime incident reports map from the LMPD to the citizens of Louisville.

There are maps for every police division and beat in the city, with data updating daily.  The map customizations also allow the LMPD to include links to specific dynamic maps highlighting recent crimes for their community newsletter alerts.

Launched last week, this is the first time citizens can get daily crime updates from the LMPD with date range and category filtering.  

The service also includes mobile phone access, search exporting, and city-wide heatmaps of crime.  It allows full access to the raw data with latitude and longitude, fostering transparency and open data.  Programmers can also grab the data on-demand for their sites and apps through the Your Mapper API.

Your Mapper also curates a complimentary detailed historic crime reports map going back to 2003, which is updated every month.

Saving the City Money

I credit the office of Mayor Greg Fischer with helping to get this project started (via a tweet in June), and seeing the opportunity for cost savings from public online mapping.  From there Metro Technology Services took over to bring the map to fruition.  They turned to us, the only area Google Qualified Maps Developer.

One of MTS's goals is to save the city, and therefore taxpayers, money across all departments.  They know that by promoting government transparency and open data by putting data online in a way the general public could understand and use would have a huge ROI by reducing the thousands of FOIA requests the city has to fill.  If the public can discover, visualize, and export the data they need online 24/7, then wouldn't have to contact the city for time-consuming data requests.

Another goal of MTS is to create a catalog of raw open data for the public to download and use on their desktop, on websites, and in mobile apps.  To this end they have Louisville's Open Data Initiative, which aggregates data across agencies.  GovMapper has enhanced their raw crime data by adding latitude and longitude to each report, and then providing the entire dataset for download on the public open data site (see CrimeStats.txt).

Cities in 3D: Getting Government to Participate

Google has had this free service for a while now, but they are currently promoting it, trying to get lots of cities in 3D within Google Earth. It's really easy to do, and most cities likely have the data needed already.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/citiesin3d/index.html

How do you get your city to participate? Who do you need to contact? Is there anyone in your local government who knows how to get this accomplished?

Louisville

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have your entire city in 3D? Right now in Louisville, Kentucky, there are about 10 structures (of sufficient quality) that people have uploaded to the global directory, including the Humana Building, Glassworks, Slugger Field, and even Museum Plaza.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=louisville

Lexington has hundreds of buildings loaded of the downtown and UK campus, likely done by UK students. Couldn't UofL students do this too? Here is a view of UK's campus in Google Earth:


Benefits

How This Benefits Your Local Government

Engaging the public in planning

• Land use/zoning
  
• Redevelopment
  
• Historic preservation

Fostering economic development

• New business recruitment
  
• Business site location planning
  
• Real estate development

Boosting tourism

• Landmarks and attractions
• Community event planning

Simplifying navigation and geographic analysis

Enhancing facilities management

Supporting security and crime prevention

Facilitating emergency management

Tutorial: How and Why to Bookmark a Search

Bookmarks on Metro Mapper allow you to save and share a particular search and let others see what you have found. It's free, quick, easy, and fun!

1. First, sign up for an account. Then login when you first visit the site.


2. Now when you visit a map, you see a link that lets you create a bookmark at the top of each map on the site.


3. Select some Filter options to the left of each map. These let you narrow down your results and create some interesting results. Click a Filter box to open it, then select the options you want to search for.


4. Do an address search on the map you are on (or drag and zoom the map to where you want the center to be and select Center of Map), then click "Update Map." This will recenter the map where you want and show you the closest items that match your selected Filters.


5. You can zoom into your results, drag the map around, and select the type of view you want (Satellite, Map, or Hybrid). You are setting up the map for a bookmark, which is like snapshot of your current view.


6. When you are ready, click the "Bookmark, Email, or Save this Map" link at the top of the map. You will then save this search and view to your account, and see an information popup on your map.


6b. (Optional) If you'd like, click on "Add Description." This will show you a popup where you can type in the name of your Bookmark. For example "Highgate Springs and Bon Air severe crimes in 2007." This will help you remember all the details of your map, and shows up on your account page. You can create or edit this description later.

7. From the Bookmark popup, you can see a text link to your bookmark, and can highlight the link to copy it, bookmark in your browser, or email it to someone else. Once you are done, click "Close Popup" to return to your map.


8. Your Bookmark is saved to your account. Click "My Account" at the top of the page. You can see a list of all your Bookmarks. For each one, you can email it, save it to your browser, view it, or edit the description using the icons to the left.


9. You are done! You can have as many bookmarks as you'd like. Then you can share them with your friends and the world and post them on websites, blogs, forums or comments on articles.

Note that the points in your bookmarks might change as the data gets updated. For example, if a restaurant gets an updated health review, the old review won't show up anymore on your bookmark. Bookmarks really save your center location and map search options for later, not every point on the map at a moment in time.

Here are a few interesting map bookmarks I made to get you started. Feel free to bookmark my bookmarks to your own account!

1. Restaurants with 86% or less health score.


2. Highlands restaurants with 99-100% health score.


3. Severe crimes around Highgate Springs and Bon Air in 2007.


4. Old Louisville's Historic District.


5. Homes for sale up to $150,000 around Highview.


6. Reported severe crimes committed by white males around Central Park.


7. Sex Offenders near Tom Sawyer State Park.


8. Prostitution reports by offender type near Pleasure Ridge Park.
   

Make some of your own bookmarks and if they are interesting, post them to the comments right here.

Featured Map: TARC Transit Bus System

Have you ever wanted to take the TARC, but had trouble navigating the myriad images and PDFs of all the routes on their site? Here is an interactive map that shows a satellite road map with a toggleable TARC route overlay on top! Zoom and pan instantly to your heart's content to see how to get around Louisville.

Crime Map Updated to November

We've updated the crime map to include the newest report data for Metro Louisville and Jefferson County, through October 29, 2007. Use the Date Range filter on the map to see what's newly occurred around your home or office.

For each crime, click the "Details" button in the popup to see more details about the case, including a description of what happened.

We've also updated our Crime Mapplet, so those of you that use it will see the new crimes automatically.

Twitter Statuses

Follow Metro Mapper's daily updates with Twitter! Track our progress in your Twitter stream. Some people have found us on Twitter through web searches, so now it's official.

Louisville Metro Police Department: MetroWatch Map

The LMPD launched a new service yesterday called MetroWatch. It's an interactive online crime mapping tool that maps neighborhood crimes reported during the last 30 days. It's an okay first stab at a public mapping service, but I think there are a number of issues with the implementation.

What Metro Mapper does better:

1. More Data. Has 2-4 years of data available, instead of 30 days.
2. More Crimes. Shows all crimes reported, instead of just some.
1. MetroWatch: Assault, Auto Theft, Burglary, Homicide, Robbery, Theft, Vandalism
2. Metro Mapper: Arson, Homicide, Assault, Kidnapping, Bribery, Larceny/Theft, Burglary, Motor Vehicle Theft, Vandalism, Pornography, Drugs/Narcotics, Prostitution, Embezzlement, Robbery, Blackmail, Sex: Forcible, Forgery, Sex: Nonforcible, Fraud, Stolen Property, Gambling, Weapon Violations, Miscellaneous
3. Faster. Shows results immediately, and once loaded allows instantaneous panning and zooming on the maps, instead of waiting for each map change to load.
   
4. More Information. MetroWatch only shows the address of the report, where Metro Mapper shows address, location type, date and time, offender info (sex, race, age), sub-category of crime, counts of crime, and distance from your address.
5. Search Options. Metro Mapper lets you see only the types of crime you want to see. You filter your search with start and end date, types of crime, offender info, crime severity, and locations of the crime. For example, you could get a map of only crimes reported in the last year relating to sexual abuse at bars or restaurants where the offender is a white male.
6. Extra Overlays. With our Mapplets, you can overlay the crime reports with the location of registered sex offenders in your neighborhood. Or if you are looking for a home, see the most recent homes for sale, then show the crimes that occurred around that home. And then you can email the map to your friends, or view it in Google Earth.
   

What MetroWatch does better:

1. Quicker Updates. Until the LMPD puts their publicly available crime data on their public website (like other US cities do) for all to use (instead of just sending it privately to LOJIC), my data will be a few days/weeks/months out of date. Requests for data can take a long time due to the LMPD process and paperwork.
2. Street Names. Since LOJIC's maps are city run, they can update their street names quickly, so if a name changes, it's reflected right away. Names don't change that much, so I'm really grasping at straws here. Google's maps are from a national database, so their updates are a bit slower.
   

So now, a year and a half after my first crime map was live, LOJIC and the LMPD have a chance to show off theirs.

What do you think?