Kernel Density Crime Mapping

Kernel density crime mapping turns a scatter of geocoded crime points into a smooth, continuous surface that shows where incidents concentrate. Each event is spread out over a small neighborhood by a kernel function, and the overlapping contributions are summed across a fine grid so that areas with many nearby crimes glow as peaks. Chainey, Tompson, and Uhlig (2008) showed that, among common hot-spot mapping techniques, kernel density estimation is one of the most accurate at predicting where future crime will occur, which is why it became the default crime-mapping surface in policing.