ABSTRACT
In this chapter we provide a brief introduction into spatio-temporal visualisation. The importance of place in criminology and crime analysis is widely recognised, and is the central topic of this book. However, taking into consideration time is just as important as place. We often hear that crime is “going up” or “going down” over time. These variations on the levels of crime along time also vary across space. These variations across both time and place are called spatio-temporal variations, and are of crucial importance for crime analysis, explanation, and prevention. Before we discuss the spatio-temporal, we have to introduce a few key ideas and concepts about temporal crime analysis, such as cleaning and wrangling and visualising temporal data, and an introduction to time serials and its components: trend, seasonality, and random variation. We then move on to explore some approaches to visualising spatio-temporal variation.
