Crime in Vancouver Neighbourhoods 2002 - 2009

Here's an example of reporting that is perfect for publishing with Tableau Public.  The Vancouver Police Department publishes crime statistics on their web-site in numerous pdf files which are difficult to compare without printing off reams of paper.  Each of these reports provides a small part of a much bigger picture.  Tableau allows us to combine the results by neighbourhood and year, and compare neighbourhood crime trends.  The reader can then choose which year, type of crime, or neighbourhood they want to view or compare.



Confused?  Play with the filters (you can't break anything) by clicking on a year and then a particular neighbourhood.  I've created two major types of crimes based on incidence; those that are reported less than 2,000 times per year for the whole city and those reported over 2,000 times.  You can filter on that grouping by selecting either trend line.

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In order to compile the data I used NitroPDFexcel - a wonderful tool that converts your pdf file into Excel in seconds and sends it back to you via e-mail.  For free.

My intent with this exercise was firstly to provide all of the years' crime stats by type and neighbourhood into one dashboard in a logical and concise fashion, and secondly to learn to use the action function for filters with Tableau.  This is tricky.  It's important to think of all possible ways in which the user will want to view the stats.  In this case, I've applied a number of actions and filtering options, which hopefully won't cause long refresh delays.

I hope that this is intuitive, clear and informative.  If not, then I've got some more work to do.

Source: Vancouver Police Department Year-End Statistics by Neighbourhood. http://vancouver.ca/police/organization/planning-research-audit/neighbourhood-statistics.html