weiziyuan/chicago-crime-analysis

Advice on Police Station Location Selections from 2019 Chicago Crime Analysis

• Motivation

I have been staying in Chicago area for 4 years. Safety concern has always been an issue in this area. By looking at the crime data, I would like to gain insights on the safe and dangerous areas in chicago and how chicago distribute their resources to maintain the safety.

• Highlighted results

Winter

Most crimes(over 900) happend on the New Year's day, then it start to decrease, reaching the lowest at end of the January. I guess one of the possisble reasons of is that many people come back from holiday on New Year's Day, involing travel, traffic,etc. On the other hand, there are many celebration events going on that day, which brings a lot of activies for possible crimes. From February,to April, crimes on average are around 600, which is low comparing to other months.

Spring to summer

Starting from May, we can see an increase in the total crime number, especially approaching the end. And it stays high until the mid September. Possibly, as the weather becomes warmer,more crimes happend. Noticeably, February crime is the lowest in 2019. Normally, this is the coldest month in Chicago with large amount of snow, which I guess brings incovenience to crimes.

Fall to winter

In the winter (October to December), the crime stays relatively low. Not surprisingly, Christmas Day turns out to be the lowest since most people are staying home and there are few people on the street.

• Resolution

• Displaying on maps

It seems that chicago downtown and south areas are the most dangerous part.

• Advice

Below is the Chicago community map.

Comparing the community map with the current distributed police station, it looks like there are none in community 76,community 9&10&17 and community 56&64.

Comparing with the safest 10 areas in chicago, the crime numbers in the above areas where currently no police station was built is relatively high. It is suggested to distribute more police in these communities. What's better is to built some police stations in these areas.

The suggested 3 policed station locations have been studied with K means clustering.They are the center of the top left yellow, green blocks ,and the middle left blue block shown below.