For this lab the students actually went out in the field first hand to collect way points via handheld GPS units. The objective was to mark each street light that we encountered in a radius between the Library, 13th street, University Street, and Kincaid Street. All in all I found about 130 street lights to be marked using the GPS device. We chose to mark this particular area because in or initial data collection, this area had not been properly marked for data analysis. After importing the GPS way points in the Quantum GIS software it was time to start testing our way points and figuring out what parts of campus were properly illuminated at night.
(Q1) When using the GPS Units it was very critical to record the way points in the correct datum. To successfully translate the way points onto the various other shape files that are necessary to complete the analysis the same datum is essential. If the incorrect datum was chosen for one of the corresponding data files then one of the layers could be at a completely different location on the map. For these particular maps the data layers were in the coordinate system: NAD_1983_Harn_StatePlane_Oregon_South_FIPS_36
As you can see in the above map, there have been some incidents of theft and other miscellaneous crimes on the campus. We found this information online from the University of Oregon’s Campus Police reports. With this new information we were able to create a .csv file to merge with the attribute table of the building information on the campus, to create this very helpful map of where the majority of crimes take place.
When testing the safety of the campus we used a few various forms of analysis to find out what parts of campus may need more lighting or emergency call boxes. I used the buffer tool to compute the distance of the emergency call boxes. I used a distance of 50 feet because the area that we are testing is pretty large so there is need for lots of emergency call boxes. If we were to perform analysis on both the areas of sidewalk that were both outside the call box and streetlight illumination buffers then we might need to run a clip analysis to find out what parts of the map are not within these two previously buffered zones.
When running the buffer analysis on both the streetlights and emergency call boxes I was able to find out which areas of campus are more or less safe. I would say that the quad area between the Knight Library, Condon Hall, and University needs to have more street lights installed, as well as the sidewalk running along the cemetery and 18th street. However I believe that the area behind the Knight library towards 18th is properly lit, as well as the area near Straub Hall and the Rec Center.
When going through the crime data it was very hard to pick which ones to add to the .csv file. Some of the descriptions of the crimes were a little hard to interpret where exactly they took place. I knew that in order to be able to add the crimes to the buildings attribute table then I would need to know exactly what building they took place in or were near. It was hard to have to ignore some of the campus crime cases.
In the future I think the University needs to expand on their crime location descriptions on their reports. Maybe in order to have a more concise location it wouldn’t be out of this world to have a police officer with a sort of handheld GPS unit to mark the exact coordinates of the campus crime. Some data that I would have liked to find on the crimes would be at what time of day these occurred, this could be an interesting field to test and find out when the majority of the crimes took place, and where the crime hot spots were located. I think the buffer analysis tool in QGIS was great to find out which parts of the walking paths were not illuminated, however I do not think this form of analysis was sufficient to create a safer campus environment. I think a open sourced crowd sourcing form of reporting crimes would be a good supplement to this GIS analysis. With these two side by side I believe the University could help reduce the amount of crimes on campus.