The Project
The NZ police has a wide range of crime data publicly available, including the location of crime, the time at which crimes occur, and the nature of crimes. This information is not currently presented in a helpful format for members of the public or Police.
Our project, ‘WanderSafe’, is a mobile application that uses Police crime, and Statistics New Zealand data to:
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Alert people to crime hotspots in their close proximity
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Help people to plan the safest journey route by suggesting safer alternative routes, WanderSafe enables the user to make informed decisions about their travel to help keep themselves safe.
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Help residents and businesses to easily access crime statistics in their area
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Police will be able to connect to our system through API to know in real time how many people (potential victims) are in close proximity of particular crime hotspot at particular time if people choose to share their location anonymously
WanderSafe is for anyone. It can be used by people who are travelling from one place to another to find the safest route, for example people like; tourists, parents of school children and people working unsociable hours. Another way that WanderSafe can be used is by people and businesses who live in a crime hotspot area so they can understand the safety needs of the community and organise what they need to do to improve the area. NZ Police can leverage the power of WanderSafe data presentation by knowing the number of people in particular crime hotspots in real time if people choose to share their location.
The Data
The datasets we have used are; Victim Time and Place from NZ Police and Geospatial data from Stats NZ. The police crime data has been processed to produce a trend analysis. The geospatial data has then been used to provide a geographic context to the crime data. The outputs from the datasets are presented in the WanderSafe application.
Award eligibility
Safety Hack bounty sponsored by IA: Our project is eligible through providing people with the information they need to make informed decisions about their travel plans so they can feel safer in the community. Health and wellbeing is increased through people feeling safe to make journeys on foot. Furthermore, it helps raise community awareness about crime levels in the area so the community can develop their own initiatives that assist Police in the national strategy of ‘Prevention First’.
Data Journalism / Innovation Hack using Stats NZ data bounty sponsored by Stats NZ: Our project is eligible through taking complex Police crime datasets along with unleashing the power of Stats NZ’s rich geographical data and presenting this combination in a simple map based visualisation that is easily understood by anyone.
Data Transparency bounty sponsored by Open Data NZ: Our project is eligible through using a simple interface designed for members of the public that makes government data understandable and usable in their day to day decision making.
Open Data bounty sponsored by Open Data NZ: Our project is eligible through the application helping communities to learn about the crime levels in their area leading to community initiated interventions which increase knowledge and wellbeing.
Tourism Location Hack and Geo-spatial (Location) Hacks sponsored by HERE location capabilities: Our project is eligible for this bounty as it leverages several APIs provided by HERE Technologies. Geospatial data is provided by the Tiles API and combined with the NZ Police crimes data, to provide a map of where previous crimes have occurred. Additionally, the project utilises the geocoding API to turn addresses into coordinates; it also uses the bounding box search API to determine which mesh block the user is currently in, and which mesh blocks the user is potentially travelling towards.
