Mapping Emotions: Spatial Distribution of Safety Perception in the City of Olomouc

Abstract

Places are strongly linked with emotions and can be considered safe or unsafe, pleasant or ugly, favourite or boring among other emotions. Subjective perceptions of a city can be valuable sources of information for city planners and a local administration. Among the above-mentioned emotions that have an effect on the quality of life for people in a city, the perception of safety has a prominent position. Safety and fear of criminality affect our interaction with public spaces the most. But criminality does not have to be the only reason people feel uncomfortable in a city, they may also be afraid of the darkness or the friendlessness of a place. The paper describes the mapping of unsafe places in the city of Olomouc via a paper-based questionnaire and a web-based crowdsourcing tool PocitoveMapy.cz. In total, the authors collected answers from 661 respondents; 144 used the online tool and 517 used the paper-based version. The final dataset comprises 1516 places (453 online/1063 questionnaire). The data were gathered over the period between 1st October and 2nd December 2015. The authors collected data that are gender specific as well and time of day specific, therefore it was possible to analyse the differences between daytime and night-time fearful places in the city as well as places that are perceived unsafe by women and men. The spatial density analysis, local correlations and hexagonal aggregation revealed hot-spots that are felt by the citizens of Olomouc to be unsafe. The strongest agreement in votes can mainly be found in the three localities with the densest localisation of votes. In these localities, a strong correlation exists also between the perception of fear during the daytime and the night-time. The results of the case study can be used by the local police department or administration authorities in the future development of safety strategies for the city.