Know When to Respond, Where to Respond, and What to Do

Risk terrain modeling is an approach to risk assessment that standardizes risk factors to common geographic units. Separate map layers are then combined in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce “risk terrain” maps showing the presence, absence, or intensity of all risk factors at every location throughout the geography. Risk terrain maps aid in strategic decision-making and tactical action by showing where conditions are ripe for hazardous events to occur in the future. Not just because statistics show that certain events occurred there yesterday, but because the social and environmental conditions are ripe for certain events to occur there tomorrow.
     Risk terrain modeling assumes a step that is basic to the development of geographic information systems in assuming that certain places can acquire attributes that, when combined in prescribed ways, create contexts in which certain outcomes are made more likely. For example, the combined attributes of open space, presence of children, and proximity to schools may indicate a park. These attributes combined can be used to anticipate the types of behavior that one would expect in a park, reducing the uncertainty in forecasts about what would transpire there. In this way, environmental attributes are used as a means of assigning risk (or likelihood) that certain events will happen at a particular place. These events may be benign (e.g. children playing) or they may take on a more sinister character where a combination of certain types of factors creates a context in which the risk of crime (or other hazardous events) can occur. A risk terrain map provides a composite picture of the underlying micro-level conditions throughout a community, city, region, country or continent. The ways in which these conditions combine is an important aspect for setting up the “meaning” that a risk terrain model will carry.
     RTM considers behaviors as less deterministic and more a function of a dynamic interaction that occurs at places. Place-based attributes are not necessarily constant over time, but the ways in which they interact can be studied to reveal consistent patterns of interaction. The computation of these patterns is a key component of RTM, with the ability to weight the relative importance of different factors at different places and how they influence behaviors and events. The attributes themselves do not create hazardous events; they simply point to locations where, if the conditions are right, the risk of hazardous outcomes or victimization will go up.
     The information products of RTM such as risk cluster maps and lists of prioritized risk factors can help you know 1) when to respond, 2) where to respond, and 3) what to do to mitigate risks when they get there.