Townsville City High School Students Assist Local Government

Australian City Studies Graffiti Vandalism with GIS

In the northeastern corner of Australia, Townsville City Council is encouraging local high school students to become involved in GIS by embarking on a "GIS in Schools" program. This program will involve open days, school visits, work experience opportunities, and GIS school projects. The program is commencing with a joint venture between the Land Information Unit and the City Safe Unit to identify the graffiti problem areas in the region. This project will involve introducing GIS mapping and data collection techniques to senior high school students by conducting a graffiti audit in their school's local area.

The GIS component of this project is being coordinated by the Council's Land Information Unit, and in doing so, it is hoping to educate teachers and students about GIS and its role in today's society and in decision making processes. Another important objective of the project is to raise awareness of the consequences of graffiti vandalism on victims, perpetrators, and the community.

The Land Information Unit's Kenneth Melchert is coordinating the GIS component of this project, and through participation in the project, students will be encouraged to consider taking university-level studies in GIS and ultimately to consider a career in GIS in local government.

"While our main focus is to raise the awareness of GIS in local schools and the consequences of graffiti vandalism on the wider community, we hope that some students will come out of this project considering a new career path," Melchert said.

Four local schools—Pimlico State High School, Townsville State High School, Townsville Grammar School, and Heatley Secondary College—are involved in the project and have recently begun data collection, the first phase of this project.

In preparing the graffiti data collection sheets, the following categories were included: tags, pieces, murals, lighting levels, visibility, structure, and medium used. To collect the spatial information for each graffiti incident, students will represent each incident of graffiti as a point on an orthophoto map, with each point having a unique ID number that corresponds to the ID number on the data collection sheet.

The data will then be compiled through the Land Information Unit's GIS. The information from the data collection sheets will be entered into Microsoft Access, with the unique ID number being the key field. The spatial location of the graffiti will be entered into ArcView as a point shapefile, with the unique ID numbers attached as an attribute. The ArcView shapefile will then be linked to the Access Database to produce a final GIS data set for undertaking spatial analysis.

The spatial analysis of the data will allow the distribution of the graffiti to be assessed and will show any concentrated areas of graffiti. Once the focal points of graffiti have been identified, their proximity to features such as toilet blocks and bus shelters can be determined. A buffer around streetlights can also be produced to determine if the concentrations of graffiti are outside this buffer and in areas of low visibility.

Each school will complete a small report focusing on the maps and graphs they produce and showing the results of the spatial analysis. This will include maps showing the distribution and concentration of graffiti and maps showing the graffiti's proximity to other features. These reports will also include the students' conclusions about the distribution of graffiti and any recommendations to the Council on how to reduce graffiti vandalism in the local community.

"We hope the profile of GIS in schools will increase as a result of this project," Melchert said. "We are trying to introduce GIS into the local schools, as some of these schools have not been exposed to this technology."

For more information, contact Sandra Sherriff, coordinator, Land Information Unit (e-mail: ss1@townsville.qld.gov.au), or Adrienne Isnard, City Safe Unit officer (e-mail: aei@townsville.qld.gov.au).

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