Hotspot mapping for Perception of Security

Abstract

Perception of Security (PoS) refers to the subjective assessment of the risk (danger, threats of adverse events) and the magnitude of its consequences. PoS plays a major role in the planning of urban security. Typically, PoS is assessed by using survey research. This approach is very time-consuming and is not well suited to tackle the uncertain and dynamic nature of the citizens perceptions. In this paper, we present a novel strategy for constructing spatial hotspots for PoS. The proposed method is based on a collaborative software tool that collects information about different PoS for a set of local security experts. This information is spatially pooled across users by using collaborative filtering. PoS hotspots are then constructed using kernel density estimation. The proposed strategy was evaluated on different simulated scenarios, and using real data from 1568 PoS registered by 50 local security experts in the city of Bogota (Colombia). The results suggest that the proposed approach may provide accurate, integrated and objective summaries of the PoS.