Advances in Visualization for Theory Testing in Environmental Criminology

This chapter discusses advances in visualization for environmental criminology. The environment within which people move has many dimensions that influence or constrain decisions and actions by individuals and by groups. This complexity creates a challenge for theoreticians and researchers in presenting their research results in a way that conveys the dynamic spatiotemporal aspects of crime and actions by offenders in a clearly understandable way. There is an increasing need in environmental criminology to use scientific visualization to convey research results. A visual image can describe underlying patterns in a way that is intuitively more understandable than text and numeric tables. The advent of modern information systems generating large and deep data sets (Big Data) provides researchers unparalleled possibilities for asking and answering questions about crime and the environment. This will require new techniques and methods for presenting findings and visualization will be key.

Big data · Computer security · Creative visualization · Crime analysis · Criminology · Data mining · Data science · Information visualization · Key (lock) · Management science · Visual analytics · Visualization · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies · Engineering · Psychology