San Francisco Crime Mapping: A Web Application Utilizing the Google Maps API

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This web application is to provides users with information about various types of crime and police incidents in the City of San Francisco.  Users specify an incident type and a window of time, in a query form, to map incidents. If a user then clicks on an incident location, information about the incident is displayed in an information box. A legend is built concurrent with user queries.

The Web application uses the Google Maps API and freely available crime data available from www.sfgov.org via the SOCRATA API. JavaScript and JQuery were used to program the user interface.

The intended audience is anyone interested in crime in the City of San Francisco. That could be a citizen of San Francisco who wants to know the number of and types of crimes committed in or around their neighborhood. Alternatively, someone planning to move to San Francisco may wish to see recent crime incident locations that inform their decisions about where to find a home. 

The application also serves as groundwork for combining the queried crime incident locations with social media posts (e.g. Twitter, Flickr) that are co-located in space and time. This would broaden the user base as it could then be used as a useful investigative tool for law enforcement, especially if real-time crime incident data could be obtained and used to query geo-located social media posts.

Currently, the app is available for use at www.fiveninetyone.com/final. The project is ongoing, so changes to the user interface and attempts at adding functionality may influence the usability of the application, in ways both positive and negative, in the coming weeks and months.