Paper Review 3: Crime Geography
For our third and final round of paper reviews, we covered the topic of crime geography. My paper, titled Spatializing the Social Networks of Gangs to Explore Patterns of Violence was written by George E. Tita and Steven M. Radil and published in 2011 in The Journal of Quantitative Criminology. The basic idea of the paper was to connect social networks (note: not social media networks) with spatial networks of violence to see if the combination of the two could predict crime better than either one alone. Using the Hollenbeck neighborhood of Los Angeles as the study area, the researchers collected social network information by interviewing law enforcement officers with expertise in gangs to make networks of gangs and crime (see figure below for an example). That information was combined with maps of crime instances and block groups to predict crimes, with the result that the combined method was more effective. I found this paper to be extremely valuable in furthering the research on the spatiality of crimes because it included gang rivalry networks, which often concern more than just proximity (which is the focus of much of spatial crime analysis). Though I found the paper a bit hard to understand in parts, I still gave it an 8 out 10. You can view the slides from my presentation here.
Paper Review 2: Health Geography
For our second round of paper reviews, we discussed Health Geography. I reviewed Mapping late testers for HIV in Texas, by Joseph R. Oppong, Chetan Tiwari, Warangkana Ruckthongsook, Jody Huddleston, and Sonia Arbona, which was published in Health & Place in 2012. The paper examined an alternative way of mapping the population who tested late for HIV/AIDS in the state of Texas, with a "late-tester" being defined as someone who receives a diagnosis of AIDS within one year of an HIV diagnosis. The researchers presented their spatially smoothed map as an alternative to the problematic choropleth map. While the topic of the paper was well explained and the maps it produced were valuable, I found the lack of explanation in the methods of the paper frustrating, leading to a 6.5/10 score. You can find my slides for my presentation here.
Paper Review 1: Landscape Ecology
For our first round of paper reviews, we focused on landscape ecology, which was related to our first lab (see Weekly update for January 26th). For my paper review, I chose Strategies for Navigating Large Areas, A GIS Spatial Ecology Analysis of the Bearded Saki Monkey, Chiropotes sagulatus, in Suriname. In short the paper examined how a species of monkey traversed its mountainous jungle habitat in Suriname by tracking the monkeys and comparing their travel paths to topographical features in the landscape. I enjoyed the paper and felt the conclusions drawn were appropriate based on the results, but I also felt the analysis lacked depth and could have been extended. Overall, I gave the paper a 7/10. The slides from my presentation are available here.
