I had heard about the Google Maps API, but have not had the chance to play with it until last weekend. It’s very easy to do, and fun to play with. But I was struggling to find a purpose for its use – until I came across the City Of Houston Crime Statistics data, which is free to the public.

After obtaining and processing the data from them to get it into a MySQL database, and geocoding as many of the addresses as possible (Houston’s streets are so confusing, even the police officers don’t know how to enter the correct street names and addresses) I’ve gotten a very basic working model of the crime stats linked to a map – so you can search for crime stats near your address for example.

When I get a few more bugs worked out, and a slightly more appealing interface for it, I’ll stick it online for anyone who’s interested to take a look at. Due to the addressing errors, geocoding takes out about 10% that can’t be matched to coordinates, but overall the result should be a semi-usable reference to crime stats based on geographical location.

Kris