Buffer Intensity Calculator

The traditional approach to a buffer Analysis is to determine a buffer distance around an object, and count the number of crimes within that buffer. In this example, a bar (shown as a green dot) has a buffer of a few hundred feet around it (buffer as blue disc) and a number of crime incidents inside and outside the buffer (red dots). Traditional approach is to give every event inside the buffer a value of 1, and every event outside a value of zero.

The software here provide 5 different inverse distance weighting approaches, so that instead of getting a crime count in the buffer, you can get a crime intensity. In the graphic shown here, the inverse weighting is a quartic one, but the program also allows for linear and exponential approaches.

The eventual score for each criminogenic location (the green dot) is the sum of the weightings for all the crime events within the buffer distance. For example, if there were only the three highlighted crimes in this image and no other crime events, the intensity crime score for the location at the green dot would be:

0.02+0.98+0.53 = 1.53