A Simple Houston Crime Project
CSCI 1470

by K. Yue

1. Project Goal

This is a simple but realistic Python project. The goal is to report the number of crime incident reported by the Houston Police Department to FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2025.

2. Data Source

Download the 2025 dataset from https://www.houstontx.gov/police/cs/Monthly_Crime_Data_by_Street_and_Police_Beat.htm and save it in the project directory. The file name should be NIBRSPublicView2025.csv.

Study the dataset.

3. First Version

3.1 Algorithm

[1] Open the input file.
[2] Throw away the first line from the file (heading line).
[3] initialize counts as an empty dictionary
[4] For each subsequent line in the input file:
      [4.1] date <- get the date from the line (item#2)
      [4.2] increment the value of counts[date] by 1. If this is the first occurence of a new date value, set counts[date] to 1.
[5] print the welcome and explanation message of the result.
[6] print the result of the dictionary counts.

3.2 Implementation

To be covered in the class.

4. Some possible improvements

1. Better processing of the CSV file.
2. Better program structure.
3. Include statistics on incidence types (NIBRS class description)
4. Allow user to select the year by using a command line argument.
5. Get the CSV directly through web link.

There can be many other possible data analytics using the datasets.