Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3
Context map of Brazil, by state and by degree grid square
3 Overview of Data and Tools
3.1 Overview of the WikiCrimes Data as Recorded
Once a crime has been logged by a member of the public on the WikiCrimes
website, it forms a record in a MySQL database. In this way, a resource of records
describing over 15,000 crimes had been amassed up to the end of 2009. Since then
additional crime data sourced from the Brazilian government has grown the
WikiCrimes database to over 200,000 records currently. Although the spatial range
of crimes is worldwide, the vast majority of records relate to Brazil, more
specifically the state of Ceará and more specifically still the state capital Fortaleza,
where WikiCrimes is hosted. For that reason, the data used for this study is
restricted to Brazilian data. Furthermore, the dataset analysed will be the volun-
teered dataset amassed before government crime records were introduced. The
groups of attributes provisionally deemed of importance were those to do with
location, date and time, crime type, crime victim type, crime setting and reason for
the crime.
