01Why it exists
Rates, not raw counts
Counting incidents ranks cities by population and tells you nothing. Everything in Per Capita is per 100,000 residents, with the year-over-year change beside it, so a bad year reads differently from a bad decade. It was built for someone who wanted to look at the numbers himself instead of reading someone's summary of them, and grew from 15 cities to 43.
02Parts list
- A map that follows youColour-coded markers sized by population on a satellite map, following whichever category you pick.
- The composite scoreFBI rates 40%, dispatch density 20%, NeighborhoodScout 15%, CAP Index 15%, OpenCrime and SafeWise 10%. Modeled figures are labelled as modeled.
- Rank and compareSearch, sort any column, filter by size or state, open a city for its detail against national averages.
- Opens anywhereOne file: double-click it from a USB stick, an email or a desktop folder. Only the map tiles need a connection.
03Construction
Caveats it states out loud
Voluntary reporting: a city that looks safe may simply have reported less. Definition drift: category boundaries shift between standards. City limits aren't metros. Small denominators: a handful of incidents swings a small city's rate, so rank order at the bottom is noise.
Built on
Leaflet for the map, FBI city figures baked in as a JSON literal, all state in memory. No fetch, no API key to expire, no build.
04Tolerances
Figures are projected to 2025 with the FBI's national trend, not measured. A dashboard that hides its seams makes people confident about things they shouldn't be.
what it is not, said plainly
05Inscription
Look at the numbers yourself. Then look at the caveats.
06The same room
- VigilA private command screen
- OverheadLive satellite tracking from CelesTrak element sets, propagated with SGP4 in your browser: ground tracks, the day-night line, and every pass over you, with the ones you can see by eye marked.
- CartographA 3D atlas from the planets to the first galaxies: 140+ objects at their real positions across ten views, each cited to the instrument that measured it, plus live satellites around Earth.
- UnlitTwenty-eight active conflicts, tiered by scale rather than by how much coverage they get