Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Mapping the Car Thieves


How many cars were stolen in your neighborhood? is a CartoDB powered map of car thefts in the Netherlands. The map shows the number of cars stolen in each postcode area over the last six months. The larger the circle marker the larger the number of cars stolen.

The map reveals some interesting geographical patterns. For example, in Rotterdam and Utrecht most car thefts took place in the city centers, while in Amsterdam and The Hague there are less thefts in the center and more cars stolen in the suburbs.

The three neighborhoods with the most cars thefts in the last six months were in Nijmegen, Utrecht and Arnhem. If you select a marker on the map you can view the total number of cars stolen in the first six months of this year and in the first six months of 2013. This allows you to see where there have been dramatic rises in car thefts. For example, in the 3511 postcode in Utrecht this year there were 50 cars stolen, a sharp rise over 2013, when 31 cars were stolen.

The map designers may have missed a trick here. Simply using two different colored markers to show where thefts have risen and where thefts have fallen would have provided a neat way to visualize and identify areas with growing car crimes.

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