The data used for this project came from a variety of sources.
ArcGIS Components
The crime statistics data came from the Vancouver Police Departments web site which is available at http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/police/Planning/reports.htm. The data is in Adobe Portable Document Format and the majority of the data prior to January 2004 is categorized by Districts. But the data from January 2004 to June 2004 is categorized by neighbourhoods which is more useful because the crime data is concentrated to smaller areas. I grouped the crime into five categories: assaults, property, prostitution, offensive weapons and traffic accidents. Property crime includes the following: robbery, break and enter, theft MV, arson, and mischief. Traffic accidents include fatal and non fatal accidents and the rest of the categories are self-explanatory. The data was then entered in Microsoft Excel and the totals for each category were summed. Total crime for each neighbourhood for the five types of crime was also summed. The file was then saved as a database (.dbf) file for use in ArcMap.
The locations for the existing police stations and community policing centres were digitized in ArcMap. There are two police stations and eight community policing centres in the City of Vancouver.
The 2001 Census data is available at http://dc1.chass.utoronto.ca/census/rp.html. The census data was extracted using the Canadian Census Analyser (CCA). Average household income, and population for each Dissemination Area in the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) was extracted from CCA. A common primary key was established (DAUID) and created in Microsoft Excel to create a relationship between the shapefiles attribute information in ArcGIS. The census data was then saved as a database (.dbf) file so it could be opened in ArcMap. The shapefile 'census2001_da' and the database file were joined in ArcMap.
I used the feature to point option in ArcMap to calculate the centroid for each DA. Then I was able to assign the point to the appropriate neighbourhood it belongs to by spatially joining the DA 'feature to point' to the neighbourhoods polygon. This was useful since I only wanted the income and population for each neighbourhood.
The polygon for neighbourhoods (dotareas.shp) in Vancouver was obtained from the City of Vancouver folder from the SIS network under the S Drive's Data Warehouse folder. The neighbourhoods map is similar to the one used by the Vancouver Police Department. But the Dunbar-Southland neighbourhood had to be digitized to include the Musqueam neighbourhood. I also redigitized the Stanley Park area. Twenty-four neighbourhoods make up the City of Vancouver. The attribute table for crime rates in each neighbourhood was joined to the attributes table in ArcMap based on the neighbourhood ID.
The roads data (vancouver.shp) was also acquired from the City of Vancouver folder in the S Drive. The roads outside the neighbourhoods were eliminated so that only roads within the City of Vancouver show up as a layer in ArcMap.
Landuse data was obtained from the SIS network under the S Drive's Data Warehouse folder. Only landuse which falls within Vancouver were selected using the 'Select layer by location' function. A new landuse layer was then created.
Population Density was calculated by dividing the population for each DA over the area (m2).
The projection for the shapefiles was projected using NAD 83 UTM 10n.
IDRISI Kilimanjaro Components
The next step in data acquisition is to convert the ESRI shapefiles to IDRISI vector layers using the built-in import tools in IDRISI. The map layers in IDRISI was projected using UTM-10n. The vector layers were then converted into raster layers using the POINTRAS, LINERAS or POLYRAS module.
Click here to see the conversion steps in the cartographic model.
