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About Bellingham Reports

How we process, analyze, and present public safety data

Methodology

How We Calculate the Safety Pulse Score

The Safety Pulse score is a composite metric that summarizes the overall state of public safety activity for a given day. It combines four weighted components into a single 0–100 score, making it easy to see at a glance whether a day was typical, elevated, or exceptional.

Component
Max
What It Measures
Volume z-score
35 pts
How today’s incident count compares to the 30-day statistical baseline. Higher z-scores mean more unusual volume.
Violent share
25 pts
How today’s proportion of violent incidents compares to the 90-day average. Elevated violent shares increase the score.
Spatial concentration
25 pts
The Herfindahl index measuring how geographically clustered incidents are. Higher concentration suggests localized problems.
Persistent hot blocks
15 pts
The number of locations that have appeared in the top-10 most active blocks for 4 or more of the last 7 days (5 points each).

Score Thresholds

Low0–19
Moderate20–39
Elevated40–59
High60–79
Critical80–100
Data Sources

Our Data Sources

All data published on Civic Informer comes from official government sources. For Bellingham, our primary source is the Bellingham Police Department.

Reports reflect the prior day’s activity and are published each morning. Data is processed through an automated pipeline that normalizes incident records, computes statistical aggregates, and generates analytical insights.

Civic Informer does not editorialize, investigate, or take policy positions. We present the data as reported by the source agency.

Important Context

What This Is Not

  • Not a crime map — We do not plot individual incidents on maps to avoid geographic stigmatization.
  • Not real-time — Reports reflect the prior day, published each morning.
  • Not a news outlet — We do not investigate, editorialize, or take policy positions.
  • Not a surveillance tool — We do not publish individual identities or maintain publicly accessible person profiles.