Crime Rate in the United States

Ziwen Lu, Ivy Xiu, Doris Yan

2002 - 2014 Choropleth Map

  • Findings: Property crime rates are higher than violent crime rates in general; Higher violent and property crime rate in South.

Prediciting Crime Rate in the U.S. in 2016

  • Data from National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA)

    • Outcome Variable: crime rate (2010 for predictive and 2016 for implementation)
    • Predictor Variables: socioeconomic status and urban planning features (street connectivity, school counts, land cover, and pollution sites)
    • Top 3 Important Variables for Violent Crime: proportion of people non-Hispanic Black, Disadvantage 1, and proportion of families with Income less than 15K.
    • Top 3 Important Variables for Property Crime: Disadvantage1, Proportion of female-headed families with kids, and Disadvantage2.

Results

Violent Crime Violent Property Crime Property

  • Final prediction for violent crime rate in 2016 with XG Boost has a RMSE of 0.593.

  • Final prediction for property crime rate in 2016 with Random Forest has a RMSE of 0.459.