What’s the safest way home? Mapping safe transport routes in South Africa with (and without) crime data

Abstract

Safety is arguably the single biggest daily concern for commuters. Popular navigation software systems such as Google Maps, TomTom and Waze do not however currently give the same weight of consideration to crime risk when directing road users to the safest and shortest routes as they do existing traffic knowledge. In this study we propose three simple methods to delineate the safest and shortest route between any two locations in South Africa considering crime risk. The first method uses historical crime data to delineate the safest and shortest route; the second method, uses only the location of so-called ‘risky facilities’ to determine the safest and shortest route; while the third method uses a combination of both historical crime data and facility data to delineate the optimal route. We contrast the resultant routes delineating by these three methods and speculate on the policy implications of integrating this knowledge into future navigation software systems.