Illuminated City

[The Leftover]

This is wobbling to market.  Crime analysis tools:  prototypes built on open data.

The "strive" was for great presentation fast, slicing a lot of data in many useful ways.  I started with SVG - and still use it for conventional charts.  A lot of the data is presented on a map.  In January, I elected to dispense with Google Maps and put the whole thing on a Babylon Canvas.  I already felt late so it has been an intense period.  Images are below and you can use it at https://sanfrancisco.ca.illuminated.city, https://chicago.il.illuminated.city and https://boston.ma.illuminated.city.  The 3d part is called "geo-location".  (You may need to sit and the landing page for a few counts before trying to navigate.)

Thank you all for making Babylon.  It has changed my life.  Also, a shout out to JohnK for suggesting SPS, which have served me well.

Comments, suggestions, conversation all welcome.

Notes:
~ I applied scene.pick to allow the user to enumerate details of crimes in a specific area. 
~ Chicago is mammoth, with about 400K crime records and a bazillion hexagons, but it still works

 

Image 1:  Assault and Battery in San Francisco for the past three years.

Image 2: Theft from motor vehicle.  Color indicates increase/decrease; elevation indicates current level

[Guest]

Hey this is really cool! do you want to give me a title, an author name and a 800x500 screenshot? I can showcase your demo on babylonjs.com

[The Leftover]

DK, I would be delighted.  I will give you several screenshots to pick from.  

[Pryme8]

I am having trouble getting the site to output anything.  I got to the map and got to the part about selecting a crime type then cant get any farther.

Maybe a tutorial option?

[The Leftover]

Prym8, I agree.  I created a helping utility but it gets fouled up when I do a major rewrite.  (It was a huge rewrite and was just finished last night.)  I want Illuminated City to be intuitively clear to all newcomers and it is not.

That being said, here are a couple tips: 
~ When you change selections on crime types or categories the "Update" button should light up.  Click that button to see your selections on the chart
~ You can also choose more narrowly for calendar time or for things like time-of-day and day of week by using the other tabs in the panel
~ The tool panel (the panel overlaying the canvas) has a "target" function which permits you to select an area and see more details of the crime events there

I hope that helps.  I appreciate the prompting and will continue to work to improve clarity.  Thanks for the note.

[Guest]

So about the screenshot?

[The Leftover]

It's pretty high on my list.  Since, I presume you will keep it posted for a while, we were trying to pick the most effective one we have.  My plan was to give you the goods this weekend.  Does that work for you?

Heck, I can do it tonight if you wish.  In any case, be reassured that I am not gonna forget.

[Guest]

whenever you can  I just wanted to make sure it will not be forgotten

[The Leftover]

I dropped it on your wall (or page or whatever they call it here) last night.  I figured the longer I took, the more you would expect it to be great.  So, I wanted to nip that in the bud.  If you do not see it, please let me know.

I will almost certainly have better-looking updates in a few weeks.  So you might hear back from me . . .

[Guest]

Which wall?? Please drop it here

[The Leftover]

Name is Brian Button; title is Illuminated City; screenshot is below.

If there is anything else I can do, please let me know.  I am a fan of what you guys are doing and have benefited from the community.

 

[Guest]

You'll be live in a few minutes

[The Leftover]

Very very cool.      

Energizing!

[The Leftover]

DK, just so you know, I gave Babylon props on the Illuminated City landing page.  You can see it in San Francisco but it will go in all cities.

[Guest]

Much appreciated!!!

[Wingnut]

I imagine this will have multiple filters/layers.

OF the forced entry burglaries, NOW show me the daytime ones only.  Of that group, now show me the ones that used the garage door... etc etc.

Now ADD another layer... green... that shows same criteria except nighttime.

(the daytime forced garage entries are now in blue, and the nighttime forced garage entries in green)

It's a bit like SQL, eh?  Perhaps, instead of trying to provide menus and checkboxes for the MASSIVE configuration options available... create a high-level scripting language... very much like SQL.

Configuring an "illumination" is an SQL-like directive... each save-able, so they can be re-applied/re-used whenever needed.  Far less buttons... but a very powerful text input field... nice backbuffering, with auto-completion options and similar intelli-sensing query-building assistance.   hmm. 

Illuminator Buddy 1.0  Helps you build a sophisticated illumination query, even if you've never built one before.    I think there's some SQL Buddy things like that... hand-holders for helping people make db queries.

I wonder if you can rely upon police databases to have identical record structures, field names, data typing (same db schema?) for their DB's... city to city, state to state, etc.  I bet not.

Anyway, interesting tool.  Useful.  I like it.  Trend analysis dream-come-true.

[The Leftover]

Quick comment on the data.  There are significant differences but I have set it up to be configurable.  It takes a day or two (or three) to adjust to a specific city.  See https://boston.ma.illuminated.city  I also sortof have Chicago and LA running.  For example, the crime categories are universal but the crime types are specific to the city data.

Targeting any sort of civic organizations means you are in for a grind.  Lots of bureacracy.  The people in it are not usually technology adept - or even completely awake.  Nonetheless I have enjoyed my time so far . . . 

[The Leftover]

I was struggling with how to provide camera views optimal to people interested in different parts of the city.  A lot of times responsibility is parceled out with a bit of geography, e.g. a police district.  Wingnut gave me a clue having to do with changing the target of the arc-rotate camera.  I like the results.  Check it out.

http://www.illuminated.city/mp4/DistrictZoom.mp4

[The Leftover]

After months of painful number-crunching, I have built a demo of something that shows the trend associated with crimes.  There is a theory that some crime-types have micro-geographic behavior -- and staying on top of those trends can help target police patrols.  This is a rendering of burglaries in part of San Francisco for about a year.  Red is rising, green is falling, blue is neither.  The elevation indicates the frequency of burglaries with some geographic weighting.

http://www.illuminated.city/mp4/BurglaryCategory.mp4

The video clip is running at 3X so the visualization is rendering pretty fast.  I cannot do a whole city at once.

[Guest]

Woot! this is really cool man!

[Wingnut]

I wonder if there is a weather factor.  And there might be a proximity factor... how close to the crime scene... does the thief reside.

Income factors, surely.  That would relate to the temptation factor.  Are single people more likely to steal... than couples/married folk?

Getting consistent data like this... is difficult, I bet.  Some might be protected by the Privacy Act.  And profile data has sure been rolling down a rough road this year, with the Facebook data glean issue.

Then, the tourism and economic development folks probably don't want any of these graphs to leak out... something that might affect desirability of a neighbor-hood.  Probably "for inner-departmental use only". 

Then there's teen restlessness and teen activities proximity, and proximity to religious centers and child scouting oppor-tuna-fish.  Proximity to parks and greenery, and busy interstate highways, and factory smells or bakery smells.  How hungry is a neighborhood?  How angry?  Gun shops nearby?  Pawn shops?  Check-cashing shops?  Bus depots, train depots, and general likely-hood of transients.

At the end of the day, the cost and time of meticulous data profiling analysis... might keep 20 patrol cars off the streets, in a major city.  *shrug*  Even the analysis must be analyzed. 

Anyway, most of that is off-topic, cuzzzz... we just do vizzz here in Babylonia.     Nice work, TL! 

[The Leftover]

The data is actually official city data -- many cities offer is as part of an open data trend.  We work with San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston.

This only looks at where and when.  There are absolutely other correlations to be made.  For example, February is always the lowest crime month in Chicago, by a consistent percentage.  I don't look at stadium events, national holidays or anything else.

I can see many other trends when I am fiddling around.  For example, theft from auto is geographically concentrated but auto theft is not.  Violent (assault) has strong place and time patterns.  Burglary also has patterns but less pronounced.

[Wingnut]

13 minutes ago, The Leftover said:

The data is actually official city data -- many cities offer it as part of an open data trend.

I bet the real estate industry just LOVES that.  And... this graphing might influence the distribution of urban renewal funding... so politicians might be involved, too.

Gruesome.  Thx for the interesting info about the trends you are seeing.  It means your system is already working.

[jerome]

Impressive and huge work

frightening also ... ?  Who would like to live in such cities knowing these stats before moving there ?

[The Leftover]

A couple interesting things in this video:
1) This is Los Angeles with 250K cells (probably 75K visible hex prisms in this demo).  When I optimize for SPS, the performance is really pretty amazing.
2) You see the navigation inspired by Wingnut's suggestion to change focus.

http://www.brianbutton.com/babylon/GeoSearch-Intro1.mp4

I did clip out some waiting periods but the video is all 1X speed.