Spatial analyses of crime in a host city: contextualizing current crime for future mega-event delivery in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

Winning the bid to host the Olympic Games and other large events offers host cities opportunities such as exposure, status, and tourism. However, hosting the events also include negative externalities impacting the local community and businesses. We examine the spatial distribution of crime in Los Angeles to expand upon the existing literature and corresponding theories that examine the relationship between crime and event sport tourism, as well as offer an applicable analysis of crime that can be used by future mega-event host cities to identify spaces potentially vulnerable to criminal activity. Spatial analysis of the incidents’ data was based on GIS embedded machine-learning analyses and a hot-spot statistical examination. Both analyses demonstrated a concentration of criminal incidents across different types in downtown Los Angeles and clusters of crimes in other areas of the city, some of which are near other venues that will be used in future mega-event delivery.

KEYWORDS:

• Olympic Games
• World Cup
• externalities
• machine learning
• GIS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Conflicts of interest

We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.