Illegal activities hotspot analysis based on GIS methods

Illegal activities hotspot detection is one of the very important aspects in social safety researches. Currently, numerous methods such as thermal mapping, local Moran´s I, Kernel density and Getis-Ords are proposed to analyze illegal activities pattern in space and hotspot detection. However, there is no discussion about advantages and disadvantages of illegal activities hotspot methods. In this article, the geographic analysis tools detecting illegal activities hotspots are reviewed and a standard illegal activities pattern analysis procedure is proposed. Based on various methods have different influence on illegal activities hotspots detection, some illegal activities data are collected and illegal activities pattern in space is investigated. The findings indicate that local Moran´s I and Getis-Ords are better in identifying illegal activities hotspots than thermal mapping and kernel density for their statistic features. The comparison of analysis results is beneficial for public safety and emergency management.