Using heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women in the public sphere
- PDF / 1,869,791 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 191 Views
(2020) 9:15 Garfias Royo et al. Crime Sci https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00125-6
Open Access
RESEARCH
Using heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women in the public sphere Margarita Garfias Royo1* , Priti Parikh1 and Jyoti Belur2
Abstract The lack of accessible crime data, especially geolocations, in developing countries often acts as a barrier to identifying environmental or situational factors in high crime areas that might contribute to the facilitation of those crimes. This paper presents a methodology for conducting fieldwork for creating heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women (VAW) in Corregidora, Mexico. Heat maps were produced based on household survey data. The results were used to select specific high concentration locations to conduct structured observations and inductive visual analysis at street level in order to identify if and what situational factors might influence the perpetration of VAW in those locations. Four broad features were identified in the urban built environment during the site visits linked to the facilitation of opportunities for the commission of VAW: (1) lacking infrastructure, (2) presence of physical obstacles, (3) poor visibility and (4) restricted pedestrian mobility. The paper demonstrates the utility of this method for aiding situational crime prevention strategies in areas where official spatial crime data is unavailable or lacking. This study presents a relatively low cost (although labour intensive) and independent method of aiding crime prevention strategies, which will hopefully be of practical value for organisations in areas with poor crime recording practices and limited access to expensive mapping technologies. Keywords: Violence against women, Heat maps, Density analysis, Crime mapping, Infrastructure, Built environment Introduction This paper presents a fieldwork methodology that used heat maps to identify areas prone to Violence Against Women (VAW) in the public sphere of five urban localities of the municipality of Corregidora, Querétaro in Mexico1. The heat maps were used to identify locations where women appeared to be more vulnerable to violence in public places. In-depth structured observations and visual analysis at ground level were then conducted at these locations to identify features for crime prevention through environmental design. It was found that these spaces shared the following four urban built environment features: (1) lacking infrastructure, (2) presence *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Engineering for International Development Centre and Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
of physical obstacles, (3) poor visibility, and (4) restricted pedestrian mobility. This fieldwork methodology can be applied to understand gender-based violence, particularly against women, in urban settings where no official data is available, or to test the accuracy of official data with onsite field da
Data Loading...
