Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Exercise
Detecting and Quantifying Patterns:
Personal and Property Crime
Section 5 Exercise 1
08/2019
 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Detecting and Quantifying Patterns: Personal and Property Crime

Instructions
Use this guide and ArcGIS Online to reproduce the results of this exercise on your own.
Note: ArcGIS Online is a dynamic mapping platform. The version of ArcGIS Online that
you will be using for this course may be slightly different from the screenshots you see in
the course materials.

Time to complete
Approximately 45-60 minutes.

Technical note
To take advantage of the web-based technologies available in ArcGIS Online, you need to
use a fairly new version of a standard web browser, such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari,
or Internet Explorer. Older web browsers may not display your maps correctly.
Note: For information on supported browsers for ArcGIS Online, visit http://doc.arcgis.com
/en/arcgis-online/reference/browsers.htm.

Introduction
This exercise presents an approach to using ArcGIS to map crime density to create new
information to analyze. The result is a map of areas where crime occurs more frequently and,
consequently, potential locations where more law enforcement presence is needed. Although
the data is real, the scenario, analysis, and resulting decisions are hypothetical.
The purpose of this example is to show how you can use a GIS to perform density analysis
and determine where more of something is occurring or has occurred.

Exercise scenario
Officials want to understand how to better police the streets. They already have a good
understanding of successful policing for the different crime types, but this knowledge can only
be effective if police are appropriately deployed. The officials know that crime numbers are
large, but they are keen to better understand if there are any areas where personal or
property crimes are particularly high.
As the county crime analyst, you have been tasked with evaluating where a new initiative
aimed at reducing both personal and property crimes should be targeted. Only limited
funding is being made available, so it is important that the money is used effectively. Two law

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 1

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

enforcement areas in the greater Los Angeles area, Compton and Lakewood, are initially
being evaluated. You have access to data that shows the locations of crimes by crime type
within the cities included in the two law enforcement areas.

Density analysis of location of person and property crimes in two law enforcement areas.

What to analyze?
You need to show the patterns of crime across the two law enforcement areas and, in
particular, show the patterns of property and personal crimes separately. The dataset you
have includes information about the type of crime for each incident. Personal crimes (such as
homicide, robbery, and all assault) and property crimes (such as burglary, theft, and stolen
vehicles) are the focus of this analysis. However, the dataset also includes other unspecified
crimes (such as trespassing, narcotics violations, and drunk driving).

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 2

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

In this exercise, you will use the ArcGIS Online mapping platform to perform the following
tasks:

• Work with map layers.

• Filter layer data to limit feature display.
• Classify data using equal intervals.
• Analyze patterns by calculating density.
• Examine tabular data associated with the map.
• Construct spatial queries to find existing locations.
• Combine layers to create a new layer for analysis purposes.

Approach
GIS is a tool that can provide you with information to help you answer questions.
Frame the question
When approaching your analysis, the first task is to frame the question.
For this case study, the analysis question can be framed as follows:
Where do crimes occur most frequently in the area of interest?
Define the analysis criteria
The next task is to consider the criteria associated with the question. What information do you
need to answer this question? How can you use the GIS to represent, analyze, and assess the
criteria?
Your map needs to show the patterns of crime across the two law enforcement areas, and in
particular, show where property and personal crimes occur most frequently.
Based on the scenario and criteria, you will need to accomplish these tasks:

• Determine the locations where property and personal crimes most often occur.
• Identify the type of crime by location.

To translate this into spatial analysis terms, ask yourself:

What information do you need to address this question?

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 3

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

For this exercise, the layers provide information related to the analysis question, such as the
following:

• The law enforcement area boundaries to define the area of interest

• Crimes, by type
• Locations of crimes
• Patterns associated with crimes to indicate areas in which to potentially deploy additional
police

Which layers do you need for your map?

For this exercise, you need two layers:

• A crimes layer
• A law enforcement area layer showing boundaries for the area of interest

Note: This example exercise provides a starting point—in all likelihood, an analysis of this
type in the real world would encompass multiple cities, as well as additional factors and
criteria.

Step 1: Open the map

Using ArcGIS Online, you can create a map with the identified layers that you can then use for
your analysis. For this case study, the initial map has already been created.

a Open a new private/incognito browser tab or window.

b Go to www.arcgis.com and sign in to ArcGIS Online using the credentials explained at the
start of this course.

c On the navigation bar in the Going Places with Spatial Analysis organization home page,
click Gallery.

d Click the thumbnail image for Section 5, Exercise 1: Detecting and Quantifying Patterns:
Personal and Property Crime.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 4

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

A map of the area of interest opens, including the two law enforcement areas you will analyze.
Note: If a message displays stating that a layer did not draw completely, check the Don't
Show This Message Again For This Layer box and click OK to avoid seeing the pop-up
window for the remainder of your ArcGIS Online session.
The dataset associated with this map contains more than 7,000 points representing personal
and property crimes in these two areas over a three-month period.
Note: The points are only accurate to the nearest block centroid. The actual locations have
been slightly moved to de-identify specific locations.

Step 2: Save a copy of the map

For the purposes of this exercise, you will save a working copy of the map.

a Save a copy of the map.

Hint: Click Save and choose Save As. In the Save Map dialog box, make any desired changes,
and then click Save Map.
Note: ArcGIS Online does not automatically save maps; therefore, you should periodically
save your map as you are working.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 5

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Step 3: Select a basemap

The initial map uses the Topographic basemap. A more suitable basemap would better
represent the thematic nature of the map data for this analysis. In this step, you will select a
different basemap.

a On the map menu bar, click Basemap.

b In the gallery, choose Light Gray Canvas.

With the new basemap selected, the points on the map become easier to see.
You do not need block group information for this analysis, because you are interested in
density across the larger law enforcement areas.

c In the Contents pane, turn off the BlockGroups layer.

Step 4: Examine the data

An important first step in any analysis is to understand your data.
There are a lot of points on the map representing crimes, but you cannot tell where there are
higher numbers of the different types of crimes based on points only. Examining the attribute

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 6

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

table may shed some light on where there are more incidents of personal or property crimes
than others.

a View the entire area of interest to visually observe the spatial distribution of crimes on the
map.

Patterns are not obvious when crimes are highly scattered. Additionally, there may
occasionally be multiple crimes at a single location or very close to one another; these point
symbols will be drawn on top of each other and appear as a single point, especially if the map
is zoomed out.
Note: In this dataset, each point represents a single crime incident.
It looks like more crimes may be concentrated in the Compton law enforcement area (on the
left side of the map), but it is difficult to be sure. Using spatial analysis, you can reveal the data
patterns.
First, you should get a better understanding of your data. This will help you interpret your
results.

b Open the table for the LACrimes layer.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 7

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

More than 7,200 crime incidents are listed in the table. Examine the information in the table,
and note that the incidents are listed by city and ZIP Code, are identified by type of crime
(Person, Property, or Type II) and crime category, and include the law enforcement area (unit
name) for each.
Because the initiative will provide funding to multiple cities within a law enforcement area,
you will need to identify the location of crimes by law enforcement area. One method would
involve identifying which cities are part of a particular law enforcement area and then filtering
crimes by city to identify how many crimes occurred in the cities within a law enforcement
area. This would be time-consuming because there are multiple cities in each law
enforcement area.
A more efficient approach would be to overlay or combine the layer information about crimes
and the boundaries of the law enforcement area.

c After examining the data, close the LACrimes table.

You have access to a LawAreas layer. Because you are interested in finding out how many
crimes occurred in each law enforcement area, you will need to join the two datasets
together, overlaying the law enforcement areas with crime incident locations.
Before combining the datasets, you will examine the LawAreas layer table.

d Open the table for the LawAreas layer.

The LawAreas table includes information about the law enforcement areas, including the
station name, type, and address.

e After examining the data, close the LawAreas table.

f On the map, click the Default Extent button to zoom the map to its initial extent.
Hint: The Default Extent button appears at the top left of the map.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 8

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

To identify which crimes fall within which law enforcement area, you will need to combine
information from the LACrimes layer with information from the LawAreas layer.

Step 5: Combine layers and data

In this step, you will use the ArcGIS Online Overlay Layers tool to create a new layer that
contains the crimes that fall inside the law enforcement areas, with the corresponding law
enforcement area attributes appended.

a Pause your mouse pointer over the LACrimes layer name and click the Perform Analysis
button.

b In the Perform Analysis pane, expand Manage Data.

c Click Overlay Layers.

d In the Overlay Layers pane, set the following parameters:

• For Choose Input Layer, choose LACrimes.

• For Choose Overlay Layer, choose LawAreas.

The LawAreas layer will be overlaid on top of the LACrimes area.

• For Choose Overlay Method, choose Intersect.

Note: The Intersect overlay method will overlay the layer of law enforcement area features
with the layer of crime point features. The result layer will contain only those features or
portions of features in the overlay layer (law enforcement areas) that overlap with features in
the analysis or input layer (crimes).

• For Result Layer Name, type Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas

_yourfirstandlastname.

Note: If you run the analysis multiple times, you will need to give a unique result layer name
each time to avoid encountering the error message.
The Save Result In field defaults to your account name; you do not need to change this value.

e Uncheck the Use Current Map Extent box.

The Use Current Map Extent box is checked by default. This limits the results to your current
map extent (the map display on-screen at any moment). You want to run the analysis on all the

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 9

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

records in the layer LACrimes no matter what area is on the screen, so you will uncheck (not
use) the current map extent.

f Click Run Analysis.

Processing time for the analysis will depend on a number of factors, including the number of
features in the current extent.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 10

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Note: If a message displays stating that a layer did not draw completely, check the Don't
Show This Message Again For This Layer box and click OK to avoid seeing the pop-up
window for the remainder of your ArcGIS Online session.
A new result layer with the name you assigned appears in the Contents pane, and the map
display updates to show the crime point features overlaid on the law enforcement areas
features.

The new Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer contains the original information about
each crime, as well as which law enforcement area it occurred in.
You decide to examine the details related to the incidents.

Step 6: Examine the data

In this step, you will examine the attribute table for the new layer to further understand what
you see on the map.

a Open the table for the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 11

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

b Scroll through the fields in the table and examine the data.
The number of features in the table is less than the number of features in the LACrimes table.
As you may have observed, some crime point locations are located outside of either law
enforcement area. The Intersect result layer includes only those crimes that fall within the two
law enforcement areas.
In addition to the information for each crime like type and city, the table now includes four
additional fields at the far right of the table, including station information, which identifies the
particular law enforcement agency (Compton or Lakewood) where a crime occurred.
Note: You will need to scroll to the right of the table to view all fields.

c Close the table.

Now you will look at what numbers or percentages of crimes occurred in each law
enforcement area by crime type, starting with personal crimes.

Step 7: Filter data to limit feature display for a single area

In this step, you will filter by law enforcement areas and crime type. Using the locations for all
crimes, in which each crime is represented by a point, you will select or filter out the data by
law enforcement area and then by crime type. You will do this before performing your analysis
to show where personal crimes occur most frequently across the city.

a Pan the map so that you can see the entire Compton law enforcement area.
Note: The Compton law enforcement area is the smaller area on the left side of the map.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 12

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

b Filter the data so that only crimes in the Compton law enforcement area are visible.
Hint: Based on what you have learned so far, try filtering the data on your own. If you need it,
the full set of steps for filtering the data is as follows:

• Pause your mouse pointer over the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer name
and click the Filter button.
• In the Filter dialog box, choose STATION_NA as the field to filter on.
• For the second field, select Is.
• For the third field, click the Unique option and choose Compton from the drop-down
list.
• Click Apply Filter.

The map display updates to show only crimes in the Compton law enforcement area.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 13

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

c Show the table for the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer again and examine the
data.

After filtering on the Compton law enforcement area, you can see that there are 3,157 crimes
total.

Step 8: Edit a filter to see personal crimes

To determine how many of those crimes were personal crimes, you will edit the filter.

a Edit the filter to select only personal crimes.

Hint: Pause your mouse pointer over the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer name and
click the Filter button. In the Filter dialog box, click the Edit tab.

b In the Filter dialog box, click Add Another Expression.

c Choose CrimeType as the field to filter on.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 14

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

d For the second field, choose Is.

e For the third field, click the Unique option and choose Person from the drop-down list.

f At the top of the Filter dialog box, accept the default of features that match all of the
following expressions.
You want to include crimes that meet both criteria—that is, are in Compton and are Person
crimes.

g Click Apply Filter.

The map display updates to show only personal crimes in the Compton law enforcement area.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 15

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

There are 291 personal crimes. If you divide the number of personal crimes (291) by the total
number of crimes in the Compton law enforcement area (3,157), you see that 9.2% of all
crimes in this law enforcement area are personal crimes.
Note: It is fine to simply use feature count to represent the number of personal crimes
because, in this dataset, you know that each point represents a single incident of crime. If
there were multiple incidents at a single location, you would use the Join_Count field in the
table and get statistics on it. The sum of values would be the same, but the total number of
values would be different.

h Close the table.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 16

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Step 9: Filter data to limit feature display for a different area

For comparison purposes, you are interested in finding out how many crimes in the other law
enforcement area are personal crimes. That information could be useful in determining which
area should potentially receive more funding.
In this step, you will repeat the process of filtering the layer for the Lakewood law
enforcement area to first get the total number of crimes in the Lakewood area.

a Pan the map to the left so that you can see the entire Lakewood law enforcement area.
Note: The Lakewood law enforcement area is on the right side of the map.

b Filter the data to view only crimes in the Lakewood law enforcement area.
Hint: First, try filtering the data on your own. If you need it, the full set of steps for filtering
the data is as follows:

• Edit the filter for the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer to view only crimes in
the Lakewood area.

Hint: Change the station name to Lakewood.

• Because you want to see the total number of all crimes in Lakewood, delete the
second expression.

Hint: Click the X next to an expression to remove it.

• Apply the filter.

The map display updates to show only crimes in the Lakewood law enforcement area.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 17

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

c Show the table for the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer again.

After filtering on the Lakewood law enforcement area, you can see that there are a total of
3,806 crimes. To determine how many of those crimes were personal crimes, you will edit the
filter.

d Edit the filter to select only personal crimes.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 18

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Hint: The full set of steps to edit the filter is as follows:

• Pause your mouse pointer over the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer name
and click the Filter button.
• In the Filter dialog box, click the Edit tab.
• Click Add Another Expression.
• Choose CrimeType as the field to filter on.
• For the second field, choose Is.
• For the third field, click the Unique option and choose Person from the drop-down list.
• At the top of the Filter dialog box, accept the default of features that match all of the
following expressions.

You want to include crimes that meet both criteria—that is, are in Lakewood and are
Person crimes.

• Click Apply Filter.

The map display updates to show only personal crimes in the Lakewood law enforcement
area.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 19

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

e Show the table for the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer again.
There are 255 personal crimes. If you divide the number of personal crimes (255) by the total
number of crimes in the Lakewood law enforcement area (3,806), you see that 6.7% of all
crimes in this law enforcement area are personal crimes.

f Close the table.

In terms of percentage, there is not much difference between personal crimes in the two law
enforcement areas.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 20

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

As you examine the spatial distribution, what do you notice? The Lakewood law enforcement
area appears to be larger than the Compton area, so this could be a factor in the variation in
spatial distribution. You can draw very little information from the pattern of points because it
is difficult to tell if they are more concentrated in one area (they may be overlapping). Within
each area, you cannot easily tell if the spatial pattern is the same. Other considerations might
be density of the housing or distribution of the population.
Density represents features normalized by area, such as the number of personal crimes per
square mile. Density analysis offers the advantage of allowing you to see the spatial
distribution very clearly. When you have overlapping points, you cannot necessarily visually
observe this distribution. Understanding where point features are concentrated would be
valuable, so you decide to perform a density analysis.

Step 10: Calculate density of features

In this step, you will calculate the density of personal crimes in the two law enforcement areas.
You decide to perform an analysis of the density of personal crimes in both law enforcement
areas first.

a Turn off the Intersect of LACrimes and LawAreas layer.

b Zoom the map to its initial extent.

c Filter the LACrimes layer for personal crimes.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 21

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Hint: First, try filtering the data on your own. If you need it, the full set of steps for filtering
the data is as follows:

• Pause your mouse pointer over the LACrimes layer name and click the Filter button.
• In the Filter dialog box, select CrimeType as the attribute to filter.
• For the second field, select Is.
• For the third field, select the Unique option and choose Person from the drop-down
list.
• Click Apply Filter.

d Pause your mouse pointer over the LACrimes layer name and click the Perform Analysis
button.

e In the Perform Analysis pane, expand Analyze Patterns.

f Click Calculate Density.

Density analysis takes known quantities of some phenomenon and spreads these quantities
across the map.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 22

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

g In the Calculate Density pane, set the following parameters:

• For Choose Point Or Line Layer From Which To Calculate Density, choose LACrimes.
• Accept the default of No Count Field because each point represents a single crime,
and there are not multiple crimes at any one point.
• Expand Options, and set the Clip Output To field to LawAreas. This will ensure that
the result of the analysis is clipped to the outer boundary of the law enforcement
areas.
• For Classify By, accept the default Equal Interval method with 10 classes.
• For Output Area Units, accept the default of Square Miles.
• For Result Layer Name, type LACrimes Density - Person_yourfirstandlastname.

Note: If you run the analysis multiple times, you will need to give a unique result layer name
each time.
The Save Result In field defaults to your account name; you do not need to change this value.

h Uncheck the Use Current Map Extent box.

The Use Current Map Extent box is checked by default. This limits the results to your current
map extent (the map display on-screen at any moment). You want to run the analysis on all the
currently filtered records in the layer LACrimes no matter what area is on the screen, so you
will uncheck (not use) the current map extent.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 23

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 24

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

i Click Run Analysis.

Processing time for the analysis will depend on a number of factors, including the number of
features in the current extent.
A new result layer with the name you assigned appears in the Contents pane, and the map
display updates to show the intensity of personal crimes.

The map shows spatial patterns representing the density of personal crimes across the two
law enforcement areas. You notice a big difference between the two areas. The incidence of
personal crimes is significantly greater in the central area of the Compton law enforcement
area. Overall, the Compton law enforcement area clearly has a higher number of crimes per
square mile in comparison to the Lakewood law enforcement area. This might suggest that
more law enforcement officers or more patrols in this area would be helpful.

Step 11: Examine feature details

You decide to examine the central area of Compton in greater detail to determine if there is
anything contributing to the higher density of incidences.

a Pan and zoom in several times on the dark purple area in the center of the Compton law
enforcement area.
You will rearrange the layers of the map to more clearly view the points representing crime
incidents by moving the LACrimes layer to the top of the Contents pane.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 25

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

b In the Contents pane, to the left of the LACrimes layer, pause your pointer until it changes
to a four-arrow plus sign and the layer name is highlighted with a blue box.

c Click and drag the layer to the top of the list. A blue dashed line will display to indicate
the location where the layer will be dropped.

d When you see the blue dashed line, release your mouse button to drop the layer into
place.

The LACrimes, LACrimes Density - Person, and LawAreas layers should be turned on and now
listed in that order.

e Click any point feature inside the dark purple area of the map to view an information pop-
up window with the details associated with each incident.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 26

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

You can see information related to each crime, but there is not enough information to answer
the question about why personal crimes are more concentrated in specific areas.

f Close the information pop-up window.

For comparison purposes, you decide to perform the same sort of analysis on the property
crime data.

Step 12: Filter layer data to limit feature display

First, you will examine the spatial distribution of points representing property crimes in both
law enforcement areas.
In this step, you will filter the dataset to view only property crimes.

a If necessary, zoom out to view the full study area (both law enforcement areas should be
visible).
Hint: You can also click the Default Extent button on the map to zoom the map to its initial
extent.

b Turn off the LACrimes Density - Person layer.

c Edit the data filter on the LACrimes layer to display only property crime incidents.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 27

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Hint: First, try editing the filter on your own. If you need it, the full set of steps for editing the
filter is as follows:

• Pause your mouse pointer over the LACrimes layer name and click the Filter button.
• In the Filter dialog box, click the Edit tab.
• In the third field, select the Unique option.
• From the drop-down list, choose Property.

• Click Apply Filter.

The map now only shows points that represent property crimes.

Again, seeing patterns with just the points is difficult, so you decide to do another density
analysis.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 28

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Step 13: Calculate density of features

Because you already filtered the data, the analysis will only show the density of property
crimes.
In this step, you will calculate the density of property crimes in the two law enforcement areas
using the same approach you used previously for personal crimes.

a Zoom the map to its initial extent.

b In the Contents pane, pause your mouse pointer over the LACrimes layer name and click
the Perform Analysis button.

c In the Perform Analysis pane, expand Analyze Patterns.

d Click Calculate Density.

e In the Calculate Density pane, set the following parameters:

• For Choose Point Or Line Layer From Which To Calculate Density, choose LACrimes.
• Because each point represents a single crime, and there are not multiple crimes at any
one point, accept the default of No Count Field.
• Expand Options, and set the Clip Output To field to LawAreas. This ensures that the
result of the analysis is clipped to the outer boundary of the law enforcement areas.
• For Classify By, accept the default Equal Interval method with 10 classes.
• For Output Area Units, accept the default of Square Miles.
• For Result Layer Name, type LACrimes Density - Property_yourfirstandlastname.

Note: If you run the analysis multiple times, you will need to give a unique result layer name
each time.
The Save Result In field defaults to your account name; you do not need to change this value.

f Uncheck the Use Current Map Extent box.

The Use Current Map Extent box is checked by default. This limits the results to your current
map extent (the map display on-screen at any moment). You want to run the analysis on all the
currently filtered records in the layer LACrimes no matter what area is on the screen, so you
will uncheck (not use) the current map extent.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 29

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 30

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

g Click Run Analysis.

Processing time for the analysis will depend on a number of factors, including the number of
features in the current extent.
A new result layer with the name you assigned appears in the Contents pane, and the map
display updates to show the density of property crimes.

The areas of higher property crime density are immediately obvious when mapping crime
intensity, particularly in one location in southern Lakewood. Property crimes show a very
different pattern from personal crimes. In the southwest corner of Lakewood, a high-crime
area is visible for property crime that is not evident for personal crime. Overall, the Lakewood
area has several discrete areas with a high concentration but also has large areas in the south
with very low density. The Compton area seems to have a continuous area of moderately
dense crime.
The darkest purple class represents areas with the highest incidence of property crimes per
square mile over a three-month period. The areas with darker purple would be candidates for
increased law enforcement presence.
Additional questions related to the density patterns begin to surface. Are there contributing
factors to the higher incidences of property crimes in certain areas? You decide to examine
details related to the crimes in the darker purple areas.

Step 14: Examine feature details

You decide to examine the area around southern Lakewood in greater detail to determine if
there is anything contributing to the higher density of property crimes.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 31

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

a Pan and zoom in several times on either of the dark purple areas in the southern portion
of the Lakewood law enforcement area.

b Rearrange the layers of the map to more clearly view the points representing crime
incidents by moving the LACrimes layer to the top of the Contents pane.

c Ensure that the LACrimes, LACrimes Density - Property, and LawAreas layers are turned
on and now listed in that order.

d Click any point feature inside the dark purple area of the map to view an information pop-
up window with details associated with each incident.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 32

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Many of the crimes are classified as theft. Again, however, there is not enough information to
determine why property crimes are higher in certain areas.
The patterns are interesting from a spatial pattern perspective and can be taken into
consideration during discussions regarding the funding initiative. Other relevant factors, such
as housing values, population density, and so on, could be included to help investigate this
issue.

e Close the information pop-up window.

f Zoom the map to its initial extent.

Step 15: Compare visual and data patterns

Based on the density analyses, you can see that there are significantly fewer personal crimes
than property crimes per square mile.
In this step, you will examine the class values for property and personal crimes to determine
which is denser.

a Rearrange the layers of the map to more clearly view the density areas by moving the
LACrimes Density - Property layer to the top of the Contents pane.

b View the map legend.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 33

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Next, you will examine the range of property crimes and the different areas of density
represented on the map.

c In the Contents pane, turn off the LACrimes Density - Property layer and turn on the
LACrimes Density - Person layer.

d Rearrange the layers of the map to more clearly view the density areas by moving the
LACrimes Density - Person layer to the top of the Contents pane.

e View the map legend.

When you examine the range of personal crimes and different areas of density represented on
the map, what spatial and data patterns do you see for each?
Personal crimes tend to be concentrated in a few locations, whereas property crimes are
distributed across the area of interest. So far, you have produced layers with continuous
surfaces that show where crime numbers are highest in the study area, irrespective of arbitrary
administrative boundaries.
The highest class for property crimes represents about 188-209 crimes per square mile,
whereas the highest class for personal crimes represents about 48-54 crimes per square mile.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 34

 Going Places with Spatial Analysis MOOC

Step 16: Save the map

a To complete your work on this project, save the map before exiting ArcGIS Online.

b In the upper-right corner of the browser window, click your name and choose Sign Out.

c Close the private/incognito browser window.

Conclusion
The results show that the two law enforcement areas have very different patterns for property
and personal crime. The Compton law enforcement area shows high areas of personal crime
but not property crime, whereas the Lakewood law enforcement area shows more property
crime than personal crime.
This information is valuable and can be used as part of the evaluation for the new initiative
aimed at reducing both personal and property crimes. In both areas, you have identified
several locations with higher incidences of personal and property crime, and the available
funding can be most effectively used to focus additional law enforcement personnel in these
locations.
In this exercise, you looked at an example of the type of problem that can be addressed by
applying density analysis to detect and quantify patterns through examination of where crime
points are concentrated.

Copyright © 2019 Esri. All rights reserved. 35