Associated Projects - University of Leicester

Visualising Crime Data in Virtual Reality

3D cylinders with "striped time" simulated crime symbols in action. The user is looking up Horsefair Street with Market Street on the left.

For his MSc GIS dissertation, David Chapman (2006/7) brought together literature from virtual reality together with crime mapping to assess the wider potential for visualising crime data in an immersive 3D virtual environment. He built a 3D model of Market Street, Leicester and used this as a backdrop to create six main crime data simulations illustrating the location of simulated alcohol-related crime incidents in a variety of ways. The particularly high levels of immersion experienced by users in the VR theatre (as opposed to wide screen PC or immersive headset) proved to be the most effective method for exploring the 3D Market Street crime simulations. Using these crime data simulations, David’s work concluded that being immersed in the data offers a number of opportunities, particularly as an orientation and training tool within the police force.

Policeman: “…if someone is from London and they come to a city like Bristol and they didn’t know the area they could put one of the headsets on or sit in the theatre and see the areas of interest. There’s subway on the left hand side that looks familiar, McDonalds and the bar down the road, it could show you where the high risk areas are and where most crimes happen. So it would work well at showing the area to the new recruit.”

Criminologist: “I like it in terms of using it for new police officers; I think it could be really nice for orientation and give you a real feel for the place that I’m working…it’s an innovative way of training as well ….”

Staff involvement: Claire Jarvis, Chris Brunsdon, Jing Li, Bill Hickin