150 word minimum for each paper.. give your feedback(your opinion) on each paper.
PAPER#1 airb
Hotspots are typically identified by analyzing a specific location that experiences significant amounts of criminal activity. A hotspot can consist of a single address, multiple addresses, a segment of a street block, or the whole street block (Paynich & Hill, 2014). There are five different categories analysts are able to use to identify hotspots. The first category for identifying hotspots is the manual hotspot technique. It requires the analyst to create points that represent the criminal events, on a map. This method requires the analyst to visually scan the distributed points to identify clusters. The second category uses choropleth mapping. It uses color to intensify the shaded areas related to the amount of criminal events that have taken place in that area. The third type of analysis is grid cell mapping. Also known as density analysis, grid cell mapping typically places a grid on top of a map that contains address-level information towards criminal events. The fourth is point pattern analysis. It utilizes a starting point, or seed, to calculate the distance between incident points to determine if they would be expected by random chance. The fifth type of analysis is the standard deviation analysis. The outputs are in the shape of a rectangle, also known as an ellipse, depending on the certain type of analysis being performed. They are also drawn around criminal events that are clustered together and to determine if they would be expected by random chance. Events are arranged in a nonrandom demeanor (Levine, 2006).
Disadvantages as a whole for hotspots include ineffective techniques in preventing or reducing crime in specific locations. The manual hotspot technique weakness is that if an analyst is not familiar with the area they are mapping they could ignore hotspots, or not be able to identify them. It relies solely on the analyst's visibility. If the analyst selects a unit of analysis that is too large it will cover the smaller spots placed in considerably larger areas with a small amount of criminal incidents. The score on grid cell mapping does not count the criminal events taking place in an area. It only provides a ratio of the events divided by the size of the given neighborhood/area. The weakness associated with the point pattern analysis, is that if it uses a very large or small radius it will create a false hotspot (Paynich & Hill, 2014). Lastly the weakness related to the standard deviation analysis is that it can not display a true visual representation of the hotspot.
PAPER#2 Gink
The class book explained that people refer to hotspots differently and there are different terms that are applied to different. The main description mentioned was basically an area with a higher amount of criminal activity that falls within the size of the search parameters and a larger capacity of people that are mentioned to be victims (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The class book also mentioned five different styles that are used when trying to narrow hotspots. The styles are known as manual, choropleth mapping, grid cell mapping, point pattern analysis, and standard deviation analysis. The manual approach basically consists of a map and putting dots on it where the crime has occurred to narrow down what areas have a higher crime rate (Paynich & Hill, 2014). It was mentioned that the method is limited and typically ends up not as effective as other approaches (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The second approach choropleth mapping consists of shaded grid maps that have commonly had errors as a result of too big of an area being searched or too small of an area being searched leaving the map obscured (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The third approach is grid cell mapping and which is more computer grid that a person can search using bandwidth leaving a detailed map (Paynich & Hill, 2014).
The drawbacks to using the method are it doesn’t give a count of criminal activity but what is referred to as a ratio (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The fourth approach point pattern analysis is where a person picks a crime and then sees how many crimes have happened around that point on the map (Paynich & Hill, 2014). An example was given by an article that discussed the method they used for the pin pattern. The article stated, “the data as a realization of spatial point processes precisely on the street network and propose an equal split continuous kernel estimator to identify particular street segments with higher crime rates than neighboring segments” (Iulian et al., 2023). The drawbacks of this method are if the search area is too big it will throw the results off (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The fifth approach is, that standard deviation analysis finds clusters of criminal activity and uses two different shapes when looking at the results. The drawback is the shape is either rectangular or oval and never gives the true shape of the area the cluster is for comparison (Paynich & Hill, 2014). The final article showed an analyst's approach using the standard deviation analysis method and then he explained how he viewed it as less than optimal (Levy, 1974).
