Linking crime and place has been the objective of crime mapping since the early nineteenth century. Contemporary scholars have since investigated spatio-temporal crime patterns to explain why crime concentrates in certain places during certain times. Collectively, this body of research has identified various environmental and situational factors that contribute to the formation of crime hot spots and spawned widespread crime prevention and reduction strategies commonly referred to as place-based policing. Environmental criminology guides the bulk of this crime-and-place research and provides a means for interpreting place and crime. The chapter details theories behind place-based policing, examples of place-based policing strategies that leverage geographic information science and its associated technologies (GIS&T), and relevant data visualization tools used by law enforcement to implement place-based strategies to address crime.
Landscapes are important socio-ecological systems that play a central role in understanding and managing intricate relationships between humans and their environment. Over time, individuals and groups develop a sense of place and form deep cultural connections with landscapes, which in turn influence how people perceive and interact with them. This means that it is essential to incorporate a sense of place and cultural connections into landscape-related studies and landscape management efforts to ensure success. GIS are a useful tool for effectively mapping the biophysical and socioeconomic elements of landscapes and can integrate these representations through their shared geography. However, there are significant challenges in capturing and representing cultural perceptions and sense of place in a GIS. Since successful landscape management is participatory and collaborative, the limitations of GIS need to be acknowledged, but the strengths of GIS when used to support participatory work should be capitalised upon. A collaborative approach using participatory GIS can help to collect holistic data that can capture some of the cultural narratives intertwined with the landscapes we seek to manage within the spatial framework provided by GIS.