A GIS-Based Pattern Analysis of the Distribution of Robbery Crime in the City of Hail\Saudi Arabia
Qasem AL Dweikat, Department of Geography,Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
Kalied Hamad Al Fiesal, Researcher in Geography, Hail, Saudi Arabia.
Abstract
Crime is a social phenomenon that geography seeks to investigate in terms of its variables, size, directions, forms and distribution. Geographic analysis assumes certain spatial patterns of crimes that are affected by the location and its characteristics. The cartographic approach is among oldest methodologies used to study crimes. This study used Geographic Information Systems (GIS); a developed cartographic technique suited to represent and analyze spatial pattern of crimes. Global Positioning System (GPS) is also used to localize robbery cases at Ḥail as well as their patterns of distribution, directions, relation with demographic densities, urban expansion, and residence of offenders and the nature and use of the surrounding landscape.
The study has concluded that spatial pattern of robbery crimes at Ḥail was a cluster one in 1997 and 2007. Cartographic and statistical analyses have shown a strong relationship between the crime scene and offenders’ residences. It has also been shown that there is a strong relation between the mean centers of the robbery and offenders’ residences at one hand, and the city center (CBD) on the other hand. Locational analysis revealed that the co-ordinates of the robbery crime sites and the offenders’ residences, have changed between 1997 and 2007, from the northwest to the northeast. The direction itself is affected by the location and direction of the mountain Ajja at the northwest of the city