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Department of Spatial Planning

RAM Colloquium with Ourania Kounadi

Start:
We are looking forward to host Dr Ourania Kounadi (University of Vienna) for a talk on the 'crime perception gap'.
Portrait of Ourania Kounadi © Ourania Kounadi

Title: Spatial collective truth – studies on the crime perception gap

Time and venue: Wednesday, 28 October 2028, 10 am CET; online

Registration via: Google Forms

Abstract:

People’s perception of crime risk may diverge from actual conditions, creating a spatial crime perception gap that influences urban life and social behaviour. This talk presents a framework for examining the spatial collective truth of urban perceptions through digital sketch-map surveys, spatial analysis, and statistical modelling. It explains how individual perceptions can be aggregated and compared with reference geodata and urban environmental characteristics. Drawing on the project “Mapping and Modelling the Crime Perception Gap”, conducted in Vienna and Budapest, the talk presents findings on the locations of the perceptual gaps, the spatial diffusion effect, the spatial endowment effect, as well as the environmental and individual factors of safety perception.

Speaker bio:

Dr. Ourania Kounadi is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Geography and Regional Research at the University of Vienna, where she leads the Digital Geography working group. Her research focuses on spatial crime analysis, particularly crime forecasting, spatially aware machine learning, and fear of crime. Her work also addresses geoprivacy, location-protection methods, and the development of ethical practices and guidelines for using personal geodata in scientific research.