Managing Urban Crimes with Geoinformatics: A Case Study of Benin City, Nigeria

Abstract

In recent time, the increase in rural-urban migration has continued to have both positive and negative impact on the receiving urban environment. Social vices such as terrorism, urban crimes, prostitution, drug cartel and urban slums are on the increase and as a result, most infrastructural facilities are been overused resulting to urban blight. In most developing countries like Nigeria, the impact of corruption and act of criminality has equally added to this menace and effort by security organisations to restore urban sanity has yielded little or no result due largely to the use of mundane policing methods. Using Geoinformatics methodologies (ArcGIS and ILWIS software), results of buffering; network, proximity, and crime service area analyses on crime hotspots in Benin City reveals that some areas are more vulnerable than others. Base on statistical analysis of administered questionnaire, the study shows that perceived higher income (33%), employment opportunities (24%), basic infrastructures (15%), quality of life (10%), change of environment (9%) and other reasons  put together (9%) are mainly responsible for migration and consequent urban growth. The location of police stations vis-à-vis police-public relations was observed to be very poor. The study also revealed that the major crimes in the city are armed robbery (29%), burglary (22%), rape (19%), pick pocket (15%), murder/assassination (4%) and other petty crimes put together (11%). Combating crime requires intelligent ICT system and a pragmatic intelligent synergy between the public and well-prepared police force. Reducing indiscriminate rural-urban migration through rural infrastructure and police welfare/logistics improvements are recommended.

Keywords: Crime, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Geoinformatics, Remote Sensing, Urban Environment.