James Cridland has created and is updating a map of verified reports of looting and rioting in London – and elsewhere.
I much prefer this to another map which is automatically updated from postcoded tweets (similar to the UK Snow map) as Twitter is as much a source of disinformation as information, particularly for emotive subjects like this (false rumours propagate just as quickly as true news) and also information that is not relevant – the cluster around Tottenham for example is by-and-large relating to offers of assistance rather than reports of trouble.
I’ve combined James’ data (as at 3pm today) in KML form, with a choropleth map from the London Profiler showing London-only deciles of the 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), and overlaid both on an OpenStreetMap map, using MapTube. You can see this here. Please note I’m not suggesting there is any correlation or causality between the IMD and the locations of the disturbances.
The riots have affected me slightly, in-so-far as it is difficult to find any supermarkets in north/east Zone 2 (i.e. inner-city London) open in the evenings, and I’m taking a long way round to home, via Tower Hamlets rather than Hackney, to avoid a couple of flashpoints on the way (and going home during daylight hours.)
4 replies on “London Riots Maps”
Nicely done: I like the use of the Open Streetmap there as well, which I find vastly superior to Google maps (especially when cycling).
In terms of your comment about rumour and gossip on Twitter, you might like to visit tweetresponsibly.net – a little set of handy hints to read before you blindly retweet something. (As of this morning, it’s “Colonel Gaddaffi is captured!” which is wrong, of course…)
Hi Oliver,
I like the map, it’s certainly something I was hoping to see combined with the riots. I have done allot of work with these indices before and find they are generally flawed, as although they are good at giving an idea of deprivation in an area or an a national level at any one point in time, they are restricted temporally and I don’t feel can be applied across years as the actual metrics need to be constantly adjusted to keep up with the list of ‘have’s and have nots’ that are associated with deprivation and the indices rarely assess a persons perception of their own level of deprivation. Which next to actual ‘real’ monetary poverrty is what in my view constantly constitutes a major factor deprivation.
Although there is obviously some link between the two datasets the data this dat will be self reinforcing once the IMD is updated. As one of the domains is relating to crime. Particularly theft and burglary!
Julie – I’m not saying there is or isn’t a correlation, but that the map allows you to make up your own mind on whether there is a correlation or not (e.g. parts of the West End.)
If you’re not suggesting any causality or correlation between the IMD and the locations of the disturbances, what is the purpose of your map? I find it ironic that more than 800 people have been arrested and will probably be incarcerated, and that the costs associated may well be greater than the amount of government assistance that’s been decreased. The “criminals” will now by housed and fed by the taxpayers.