Mapping crime data in R
Crime data often contains spatial components. As a result, analyses of crime data often lead to patterns that are clearly linked to geography. Naturally, putting the data or analysis on a map makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, if you have never matched statistical data to spatial data then you may not know how easy it can be to make beautiful data maps. That’s where this workshop comes in! The aim of this free workshop is to teach participants how to use the R statistical and graphical environment to map open-source police recorded crime statistics onto geographic representations. More specifically, we will:
- use R packages such as ggplot, sf and tmaps
- briefly explore open-source crime data using Surrey as an example
- introduce how to download, import and use spatial data in the form of shapefiles
- demonstrate how to join crime data to shapefiles
- introduce classification methods
- use census data to map crime rates
Presenter: Nadia Kennar, UK Data Service
Level: Beginner (knowledge of spatial data, GIS or mapping); Lower intermediate (experience of R)
Prerequisites: This workshop is suitable for (lower) intermediate users of R but there is no need to have experience with GIS software or spatial data. Users should have R and R Studio already installed and running, know how to set the working directory in R, how to read in data, how to write basic R functions and how to save scripts and output files
Target Audience: Researchers/anyone interested in crime and spatial data
The workshop takes place the day before the Crime surveys user conference.