Geographic Information System for Crime Mapping: A Case Study of Property Crime in Kuching, Sarawak

• Main Authors: Norita, Jubit, Tarmiji, Masron
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Journal of Asian Geography 2022
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/44709/3/Geographic%20Information.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/44709/; https://ejournal.usm.my/jag/article/view/377
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

Residents in Kuching claim to be worried about the increasingly of property crime. In Sarawak property crime was reported more frequent occur and contribute 88% cases compared with violent crime 11.2%. The aim of the study is to identify the spatial pattern of property crime in Kuching, Sarawak. This study using spatial data such as road data, police station boundary and police sector boundary that obtained from police station heads in the form of pictures and street names. Digitization was conducted based on road data to facilitate accurate dividing of police sector boundaries. Non-spatial data including property crime cases (2015-2017), month, time, types and incident address which is taken directly from the Police Reporting System. The crime data in PRS does not contain any coordinate reference system (x, y) and GIS help to locate the coordinate through the address of the incidents. Global Moran’s I tool help to identify the overall pattern and trend of property crime in Kuching, Sarawak. This study has shown that the spatial pattern of property crime in Kuching, Sarawak in 2015-2017 was random because of p value greater than 1.0 and Moran’s Index approaching zero. However, the result of stolen cases showed a positive spatial autocorrelation p-value of 0.063805 (p<0.10) indicating a case was clustered with 90% of confidence level in 2015. The result of stolen cases showed p-value 0.000371 (p<0.01) which indicate cluster at 90% of confindece level. The stolen cases in Kuching showed a strong positive spatial autocorrelation in 2017 because z-score of 2.830712 greater than 2.58 with the p-value of 0.004644 (p<0.01). Thus, the stolen cases do not occur at random in 2015-2017. This study can help police and authorities in making decision for preventing property crime.