Spatial analysis operations for crime analysis

A range of new process operations and spatial statistics tools for identifying and analysing patterns and trends in crime data have been added to SIS Desktop.

‘Spatial Mean’ calculates the geographic centre of a set of points, for example, locations of crime. This includes a ‘Weighted Spatial Mean’ option, enabling analysts to target specific incident types.

New ‘Count and Classify’ options include ‘along linear network’ to assign an incident to the nearest part of the road network, and ‘along individual linestrings’ to count incidents within a defined distance.

‘Nearest Neighbour Index’ counts a set of data points, from items or from within polygons, and determines if these points are randomly distributed or spatially clustered.

For resource and intervention targeting, ‘Location Quotient’ can be used to analyse incidents, eg crimes, relative to population size. This is useful for identifying which locations have a higher or lower than average crime rate. The ‘Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise’ (DBSCAN) algorithm is also included, enabling analysts to create a cluster point, set a cluster label property, and cluster items.

Additional routing options have been added to allow users to select a set of start points and a 'cost’, in time or length. From each of these points, an isochrone is created, showing how far a vehicle can travel using the road network.

Latest OS NGD feature types supported

Cadcorp is an Ordnance Survey Premium Partner and continues to provide in-software support for the latest OS NGD data enhancements. This includes the new Building Access Location, Crowd Sourced Name Point, and Street Light feature types released in March 2025.

what3words integration in SIS Desktop

SIS Desktop search now supports what3words. Once a customer has added their what3words API key, they can search a what3words address or click on the map to learn the what3words address for that location.

In addition to standard search, a range of further options have been added including what3words cursor-tracking displayed in the status bar. To support analysts, what3words addresses can be bulk geocoded, and a grid reference expression can return the what3words address as a dynamic attribute. what3words has also been added to ‘View Geometry’, allowing users to take, for example, a spreadsheet or database table containing what3words addresses and display the locations in SIS Desktop as a map overlay.