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Placial Analysis of Events: a Case Study on Criminological Places

NCJ Number
254201
Journal
Cartography and Geographic Information Science Volume: 46 Issue: 6 Dated: 2019 Pages: 547-566
Author(s)
Date Published
2019
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This article expands upon the rich concepts of place in the literature to propose a quantitative framework for placial analysis based on events.
Abstract

The contrast of space and place has long been a topic of scholarly discussions in many disciplines. Although spatial analysis enjoys a multitude of quantitative methods, the study of place remains mostly conceptual and descriptive. Central to the framework proposed in this article are three assumptions: (1) human experiences transform space to place; (2) events build human experiences in space; and (3) places emerge organically and may change characters, spatial extent, and location over time through the shifts in occurrences and types of events in space and time. The framework proposed in this article consists of three elements: clustering events, decomposing event distributions, and identifying the similarity of event clusters. This framework was applied to identify criminological places in the City of Dallas in the United States and the changes of these places from June 1, 2014 to May 30, 2018. (publisher abstract modified)

Date Published: January 1, 2019