[ddj] Open data murder tracker in Trinidad and Tobago

Tue Apr 8 18:50:37 UTC 2014

Thanks Tarek! I think I will eventually go with the unique ID. I also think
that an additional column for the date of the discovery is important.

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:34 AM, Tarek Amr <tarekamr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Gerard,
>
> In Egypt we have a website (http://wikithawra.wordpress.com/) counting
> the number of death (by police and army) since the Egyptian revolution in
> 2011, they use a Google Spreadsheet for that.
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApHKfHFs3JYxdGQybmtTVk42bEtxemNjZldJcWxjbnc&usp=drive_web&pli=1#gid=0
>
>
> For the two problems you mentioned they do the following:
>
>
>    - Separate record (row) for each person, so for example if 20 persons
>    died in the same incident there will be 20 rows, one for each of them.
>       - This is to enable them to add the victim's name in each row, also
>       for the row count to reflect the actual number of deaths.
>
>
>    - In each row there are two fields among others, one for the date of
>    incident and one for the death, as in some cases, people die days after
>    they have been attacked by the police. In your case it can be a field for
>    the date the body is discovered and other by the actual date of death.
>
> For them they keep the ID's a a serial number starting from one, since the
> date, but as you said since you want to also track the number of killings,
> then an additional column with a unique reference number for each
> incident should solve your other of counting the number of incidents, as a
> pivot table in this case on the incidents ID's will help counting the
> number of incidents.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:09 PM, Gerard Best <gerardbest at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> INTRO
>> I'm on a team working on a open data journalism project called Bullet
>> Points and I'm hoping you can lend your collective experience/expertise to
>> the project.
>>
>> Bullet Points tracks murders in Trinidad and Tobago. The murders are
>> tracked on a Google doc here: http://tinyurl.com/bulletpoints2014
>>
>> The fatal incidents are listed chronologically and are numbered by victim
>> (murder toll). The victims are announced on Twitter (
>> twitter.com/bulletpoints_) by their toll number. This system has some
>> serious limitations.
>>
>> PROBLEM
>> Firstly, it is geared toward tracking the murder victims but is an
>> inadequate way of tracking the actual killings themselves. For example,
>> when there is a double murder, the toll goes up by two but the number of
>> incidents goes up by only one.
>>
>> Secondly, killings do not always occur in the same chronological order
>> that the victims' bodies are discovered. Sometimes bodies of murder victims
>> are discovered after several days. When this happens, the relevant killing
>> must be inserted somewhere in the middle of the existing chronological
>> list, which obviously changes the toll count of all subsequent victims.
>> Unfortunately, because our current system relies on the toll count to
>> identify the victim, it has now run into this serious limitation.
>>
>> PROPOSED SOLUTION
>> I think that what I need to do is add another column that contains a
>> unique reference number for each incident. The unique reference number can
>> follow a standard protocol such as [DATE][INTEGER]. For example, the most
>> recent murder, which was discovered today, would have a reference number
>> 2014013001. I think this will deal with the problem but I am not sure it
>> is the best solution.
>>
>> Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you think you can help, I
>> would be grateful for your perspective on this problem and proposed
>> solution.
>>
>> --
>> ---
>> Gerard Best
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Best Regards
> Tarek Amr
>
> http://tarekamr.appspot.com/
>
>
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-- 
---
Gerard Best
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