cartography - Crime mapping symbology

Are there any standard, publicly available symbol sets for crime mapping? What are their intended applications and their strengths and weaknesses?

Answer

Another publicly available symbology set for crime mapping applications is the Crime Mapping Symbology (CMS).

http://emsymbology.org/Police_CAD-RMS/index.html

Intended Applications

The Crime Mapping Symbology (CMS) was created to be used in a web mapping environment.
The use of PNGs also allows for many desktop mapping applications to import the symbols for use in a non web environment.

Strengths

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  The symbol set has been created in PNG format to allow for a broad range of software platforms.

  
  


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  The symbols are intended to utilize simple intuitive pictograms that require little training to become familiar with their representations.

  
  



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  The symbols are designed to be highly visible against a wide range of vector and raster based backgrounds.

  
  

Weaknesses

• The symbols were designed to meet the specific needs for the police forces in Pierce County, Washington rather than the overall crime mapping community. While it was designed to meet the specific needs a particular organization those needs are also shared by many other organizations which might find value in this symbol set.


• The use of letters as modifiers are based on English words which might be limiting to Non-English based applications.