Space-Time Variation of Property Crime in Beijing with ESDA Method

Abstract

property crime like residential burglary is a frequently occurred offence in Beijing. For crime reduction, it is important to know if there are hotspots exist and if it does, how many of them are maintained. In this study, spatial and temporal pattern of residential burglary by Policing command unit of Chaoyang district of Beijing is investigated. The method of ESDA (Exploration of Spatial Data Analysis) is proposed for identifying crime hotspots and test their significance. The results demonstrate that identified significant crime hotspots varied by time of day and day of week. Specifically, the burglary was observed to be clustered in center and south of Chaoyang district but none in northern. While by day of week, the patterns of burglary distribution changed and outliers appeared on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. By time of day, the burglary outlier appeared in the period between 18:00 PM and 22:00 PM.