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StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

streetscore.media.mit.edu

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Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#21

Post by tetrep »

suprgeek wrote: post #19

How safe does this street "look" to a Human? NOT How safe is this street? Very important distinction - I would suggest changing the name of the project to "PerceivedStreetScore". What is now needed is actually part 2 of this project - one that pull records from City/County/Federal crime stats, overlays them with a Map and then actually produces a "ActualCrimeScore" for each of these highlighted streets. Then compare…

Don't forget to factor in time as well, it would be accurate to judge a high crime street as safe during the day if all of the crime happened during the night.

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#22

Post by electromagnetic »

rooneel wrote: post #7
jamesbritt wrote: post #4

What I would like is something that took street photos and safety info and somehow deduced what visible characteristics correlated with safety. A while back I was reading a mailing list thread where someone claimed that adding more street lighting didn't improve safety. This struck me as bullshit. I did some Googling to dig up some fact to show just how right I was. Apparently, not so right at all. There were assorte…

That's really interesting. I remember when this [1] article came out, showing the difference in streets' income level with the greenery in the street, I found it amazing. Once I started thinking about it, I figured it should have been rather obvious. So, the way to do would be to first figure if there's more crime in lower-income streets (likely. Right? No data to support me here) Then using the 'foliage detection al…

I would assume foliage is correlated to wealth. The most affluent areas of town in my city are generally placed on half acre lots (the old city has some that are on acre plus lots inside the city), upper middle class are on the 1/8th to 1/4 acres lots. I live in the original limits of the city, my house is 100 years old and sits on 1/16th of an acre. I'm solidly middle class and my neighbourhood feels it. The biggest thing to happen in my area in the past few months was a car accident on the main road just today. The last was a domestic in a 3-unit rental (IE cheap rent).

The issue with this theory is that my city has a strong industrial sector. So you can actually get great big 1/4 acre housing lots for really cheap. You're sandwiched between train tracks and an industrial machine shop. So be prepared for lots of crack deals on your streets (not even joking).

Again, going purely by foliage, my friend had a fantastic place in the city. 1/8th acre lot, amazing location in town. Hookers on the lawn. Ever had to yell at a pimp that you called 911 with a 3 month baby in your arms? She had a house worth half a mil.

The biggest issue with "perceiving" danger is that it's not real danger. Sure, there's a lot of dangerous looking parts of town. I know, I work doing home renovations. I've been there.

I worked in the roughest area of town. We had expensive tools, we had scrap aluminum (I had two 4ft pieces weighing 30lbs a piece and were easily carryable. Scrapped for $70). My boss was freaked, worried something was going to get stolen. Except, we were completely safe. I'd say we were on the safest street in the damn area. Why? Because all the hookers going home in the morning were scared shitless of one house. That house had a black guy who puts NFL line backers to shame sitting on the porch all day, every day as people came and went. When a homeless guy had a freak out at the end of the street, he's on his way. Why? Because a guy who's likely dealing drugs or worse, and presumably doing pretty good at it to have a bouncer, doesn't want shit happening on his street.

The Hells Angels club is in one of the poorest areas of town. When MS13 started showing up in town in the poor areas, their area ended up with a bunch of no-suspect assaults on gang members and it's been a couple years since I saw anyone who looked like they would belong to MS13. It would be a really bad area to live if you're Hispanic, but if you're white. It's probably one of the safest areas in town for you.

We as humans are pretty shit at evaluating actual risks. Our fears play into it too much, and our greatest fear is the fear of the unknown. I grew up in a very rough area of England and I moved to Canada. The "roughest area" has nothing compared to middle-class suburbia where I lived. At 2am in the morning am I afraid I'm going to get the shit kicked out of me by drunk hooligans? No. At 6pm on a sunday am I afraid I'm going to get mugged at knife point by a bunch of 15 year olds? No. People on my street feel "in danger" because there's teenagers playing on skateboards.

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#24

Post by notahacker »

duderific wrote: post #20
HillRat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, once you place the imprimatur of machine learning upon it, people will tend to conflate "perceived safety" with "actual safety." At the extreme, it becomes a way to create an apparent but false confirmation of the prejudices of the crowd. This is one of those rare cases in computer science research where there is an actual ethical component to the work being done; while machine scoring landscapes accor…

If it was crowdsourced, why would you need an app to know if you were in a bad neighborhood? Your perception should be roughly similar to those who had contributed their opinions as crowd source data. Kind of like needing an app to tell you it's raining when you're standing in a downpour.

The act of using the app can increase that perception though; if you get mugged whilst checking your smartphone in the middle of the street it's a pretty good indicator the area isn't safe :-)

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#26

Post by Rolpa »

tetrep wrote: post #21
suprgeek wrote: post #19

How safe does this street "look" to a Human? NOT How safe is this street? Very important distinction - I would suggest changing the name of the project to "PerceivedStreetScore". What is now needed is actually part 2 of this project - one that pull records from City/County/Federal crime stats, overlays them with a Map and then actually produces a "ActualCrimeScore" for each of these highlighted streets. Then compare…

Don't forget to factor in time as well, it would be accurate to judge a high crime street as safe during the day if all of the crime happened during the night.

Not to mention that one street may very well be safer for one individual compared to another depending on any number of variant factors - race, gender, build, etc.

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#27

Post by ijk »

electromagnetic wrote: post #22
rooneel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. I remember when this [1] article came out, showing the difference in streets' income level with the greenery in the street, I found it amazing. Once I started thinking about it, I figured it should have been rather obvious. So, the way to do would be to first figure if there's more crime in lower-income streets (likely. Right? No data to support me here) Then using the 'foliage detection al…

I would assume foliage is correlated to wealth. The most affluent areas of town in my city are generally placed on half acre lots (the old city has some that are on acre plus lots inside the city), upper middle class are on the 1/8th to 1/4 acres lots. I live in the original limits of the city, my house is 100 years old and sits on 1/16th of an acre. I'm solidly middle class and my neighbourhood feels it. The biggest…

> I would assume foliage is correlated to wealth

Likely. Lawns have pretty much always been conspicuous consumption: Versailles is sometimes considered the source of the first modern lawn, as opposed to a pasture.

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#28

Post by brownbat »

suprgeek wrote: post #19

How safe does this street "look" to a Human? NOT How safe is this street? Very important distinction - I would suggest changing the name of the project to "PerceivedStreetScore". What is now needed is actually part 2 of this project - one that pull records from City/County/Federal crime stats, overlays them with a Map and then actually produces a "ActualCrimeScore" for each of these highlighted streets. Then compare…

I was expecting a traffic fatality map, something like this: http://riskyroads.org/

Re: StreetScore scores a street view based on how safe it looks to a human

#30

Post by pimlottc »

mcdan wrote: post #16

One thing they should consider doing is using the average of the surrounding points to rise or lower the score of a particular spot. For instance, near where I live there a number of examples where there is a green dot on one side of the street and a red on the other, just down the block they reverse, this doesn't make any objective sense at all.

I'd be cautious about that. You can easily have a dark foreboding alleyway just off a bright, well-lit street. Safety gradients (perceived and actual) can be quite steep.
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