Geolitica has made some significant new changes to our Patrol Heat Map feature. We have improved the color display scheme, added the ability to view the data underlying the boxes, and provided the capability to download box patrol data.
What the Patrol Heat Map does is aggregate all AVL/GPS data from all cars on patrol, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The colors on the heat map are based on a relative scale and represent the total time measured for all officer presence in each box location. These boxes are 500 x 500 feet and cover the entire jurisdiction under patrol. The brighter colors represent more patrol time and darker colors represent less patrol time.
The data can be used as a management tool to see which areas of your jurisdiction could be under-patrolled or over-patrolled. Data can be used internally and shared externally. The underlying data we provide increases departmental accountability and transparency for patrol operations. You can access the heat map same as before, through the Map Layers icon in the upper right side of the display from the main page.
After you click on this, you have several options. Click on the rightmost icon, labeled Patrol Heat Map.
Clicking on the Patrol Heat Map button displays the heat map for your selected region at the default level of 7 days.
From this menu, you have several options. You can change the time period displayed by clicking on the date field. Options range from a single day to a custom historical time period.
Clicking on the icon below the date field allows you to change the patrol area you’re looking at. You can see a city/county-level summary (default), or drill down to look at specific beats.
Below that icon is a button labeled “Plasma.” That is the default color scheme used to illustrate the relative box time. If you click on that you will see 4 more color options (Viridis, Magma, Warm and Cool) that you can use according to your preference. The data presented by any of these color schemes is the same; the only difference is the color palette.
You may want to make these boxes more or less transparent. Below the icon labeled Plasma you will see a slider bar. You can move that to the left or right to make the boxes more or less transparent according to your preferences. The default is 50%.
The scale below the slider bar shows the legend for the map. Boxes with less time are at the top and boxes with more time are at the bottom. Next to each box color is the amount of time associated with each. Be aware that the boxes showing the most patrol time may often be your main station or substations.
Now, on to the boxes themselves. When you hover your mouse over any box on the map, it will show the total time for that box immediately below the slider bar. When you click on a single box, you will get all of the patrol detail for that box. This is supplemented by a Google Street View map of the box location when available.
In the example above, you can see that 47 different vehicles have been in this box location over the last week. The total time spent in this box (the “Total Dosage” field) is 14 hours, 33 minutes and 33 seconds. The data is arranged with the highest dosage vehicles at the top of the list. You can also see how many times they have been to that box. You can scroll down the list to see all vehicles and their associated dosages. Click on the PDF or CSV icons to export this data in PDF or CSV format.
Let’s say you want to find out more information about device 501A on the list. When you click on 501A, it shows you that this device has had 12 visits to this box in the last week. These visits are sorted by date from oldest to newest. Only the first 2 dates are shown in this image; you can scroll down to see more recent dates.
If you click on the first date with 6 visits, we display the underlying data that makes up those visits. This data is very granular and includes date, begin time, end time, and duration. At each level of review of this data, you can download it as a PDF or CSV by clicking on the associated icons.
Let’s say you want to see data for more than 1 cell. To do that, you go back over to the Patrol Heat Map menu and click the button marked “Multiple” at the bottom of the menu.
This now allows you to select more than one box and summarize all the patrol data underlying these boxes. Typical examples might include a shopping center, a stretch of road, a perimeter, an apartment complex, or a neighborhood.
In the example below, we are looking at total patrol time across 6 boxes on E. Chicago St. You can see that in the last week there have been 58 unique vehicles that have visited this stretch of road. The total amount of patrol time was 9:51:41 and there were 1,063 unique visits. As with a single box, you can drill down by device and date to get the low-level detail associated with these visits.
You can combine the Patrol Heat Map with other features Map Layers features. In the image below, patrol time for the last week is overlaid with crimes recorded over the last week. You can use this to see if there are areas with high crime rates that show up as being under-patrolled.
Enjoy our new and enhanced Patrol Heat Map and let us know how you’re using it!
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