Department of Justice
Regional Crime Analysis
Geographic Information System
(RCAGIS)
The US Department of Justice Criminal Division GIS Staff, in conjunction with the Baltimore county Police department and the RCAS group, has developed a crime analysis system called RCAGIS (Regional Crime Analysis GIS). RCAGIS is an ESRI MapObjects® based system that is designed to facilitate the analysis of crime on a regional basis. RCAGIS also integrates the CrimeStat® spatial statistics software package developed by Ned Levine and Associates under a grant from the National Institute of Justice. The RCAGIS Crime Analysis System was designed specifically to assist in the analysis of crime incident data across jurisdictional boundaries.
RCAGIS Features
3 Modes, each designed for a specific level of analysis: 'Quickmap' for simple queries; 'Mapper/Analysis' for crime analysis; and 'Reports' for report generation.
Wizard driven incident database queries enable simple and complex database queries.
Graphical tools for creation, saving, and printing of map layout files.
RCAGIS interfaces with CrimeStat® Spatial Statistics software (developed by Ned Levine and Associates) for advanced analysis tools such as hotspot surfaces and ellipses.
Tools for graphically viewing and analyzing historical crime trends in specific areas.
Linkage tools for drawing links between vehicle theft and recovery locations, incident locations and suspects' homes, and between relateable attributes in any two loaded shapefiles.
Suite of reporting tools for creating Results Reports, Crime Alerts, CrimeStac Reports, and Daily, Weekly, or Monthly Summaries.
Supports digital imagery such as orthophotos and other raster data sources.
Supports geographic source data in multiple projections.
Configurable to support multiple incident database backends. Has been tested with MS Access and FoxPro.
Configurable to support varying database schemas using a field mapping utility.
Contact Information
Please forward any questions or comments regarding RCAGIS or the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety to: maps@ojp.usdoj.gov.
Distribution Updates
2002-01-25: RCAGIS WR 1.1 program and supporting documentation will now be distributed through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. As of September 2000 RCAGIS development at the US Department of Justice Criminal Division officially ceased and the program is not supported by the Department of Justice. Through and agreement with the Crime Mapping Research Center (CMRC) at the National Institute of Justice, NACJD will preserve and distribute the existing RCAGIS files. Technical questions regarding RCAGIS should be forwarded to the CMRC at cmrc@ojp.usdoj.gov.
2000-09-29: RCAGIS WR 1.1, the final official release from the US Department of Justice Criminal Division GIS Staff is now available. Additionally, today's release includes an installer for the GIS Staff's standalone geocoding software, GeneriCode. The source code for this application is in the GCode folder in the source code download.
An Adobe Portable Document Format file showing the custom objects used in RCAGIS is now included with the technical documentation. Alas, the full technical documentation is still rather lacking, though more has been added with respect to what was available earlier.
2000-07-11: RCAGIS sample data and RCAGIS setup program are now available. The setup program will install and configure RCAGIS and the sample data on your system. The sample data is fictitious, random crime data to be used strictly for exploring RCAGIS' capabilities. See the descriptions below for more information.
2000-06-21: Sample geographic data and a fictional police incident database are now available for downloading. With these files, RCAGIS can be tested and demonstrated without having to configure actual police geography and incident data.
2000-04-18: Added missing code for the XYplot ActiveX component to the source code distribution, slight updates to the importer source code, included missing online help files to the RCAGIS Source distribution, minor updates to rcagis.vbp including a fixed proportional symbol identify tool.
2000-04-13: Updated the source code distribution, removing some old, unnecessary component projects. Also updated the Technical Documentation with a few minor corrections.
Related Sites
Visit the Mapping & Analysis for Public Safety site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/.
