Blog: Pete Loshin

« Remote Windows System Administration with Linux | Main | Talking about Benchmarks »

True Crime and Open Source Mapping Solutions

Did you see Shawn's blog entry ("Criminal Predictions")?.

It reminded me of ChicagoCrime.org. Using Google Maps for the maps, and a feed of crime data from the Chicago PD's publicly available database of reported crime at the Citizen ICAM site, ChicagoCrime.org lets you browse Chicago to see where, and what, crimes have been reported over the past 90 days.

The brainchild of up-and-coming web journalist/technologist Adrian Holovaty, ChicagoCrime.org was a spare-time project that's garnered a lot of attention (read Holovaty's interview in newspaper industry newspaper Editor and Publisher).

I wonder how much of the functionality of the SPSS/Information Builders could be encompassed in this type of application built on a shoestring and powered by another of Holovaty's projects, the Django web framework. An important part of Django is the ability to define data models entirely with the Python programming/scripting language. Django offers a dynamic database-access API, as well as the ability to write portions of the application in SQL, if needed.

Web-application hybrids ("mashups") combine two or more, usually unrelated, web services to create new and unique applications. Some of the most interesting are Google Map mashups marrying powerful mapping with geographical data from wherever you can find it. Most are partly or entirely driven by free and open source software. Check out the Google Maps Mania blog for the latest Google mapping news.

Share: