CrimeBase, part of the Neighborhood Information System, has been entered into an online maps contest run by Microsoft and Directions Magazine. You can vote for crimeBase by visiting the following website. CrimeBase is part of the government category and you will have to fill out a short registration form to vote, so that you only vote one time. Anyone who votes is eligible to win a flat screen television. To see an archived PDF of the contestants in the competition, click here.
CrimeBase is an innovative way of distributing meaningful crime data to Philadelphians engaged in community revitalization, public safety, planning, and policy analysis. Each year the Philadelphia Police Department fields many public requests for timely crime data presented at useful geographic levels like police district or sector. CrimeBase meets this demand by providing over 95 different types of crime and demographic data at multiple planning geographies, including neighborhood, zip code, school feeder area, census tract, police sector, police district, and census block group. In addition to providing these data to the public, crimeBase is equipped with powerful analytic tools. The publicly-accessible website allows users to create maps, tables, charts, summary statistics, and trends for five years of crime data. In addition crimeBase allows users to export aggregate crime data to be used in common spreadsheet software like excel. CrimeBase’s user-friendly interface has encouraged users that range from juvenile probation workers to local town watch patrol groups. Launched in March of 2004, crimeBase makes available Philadelphia Police Department data and Avencia’s data analysis tools to a broad range of Philadelphia users.
