Weather and its effects on homicide rate and injury type in Harris County, Texas

Homicide is a leading cause of death in the United States in younger people and costs Americans millions of dollars in loss of life. Further strain is placed on the taxpayers when emergency services are strained during times of increasing violence with inadequate coverage and the opposite of decreased activity with too much coverage by personnel. Different types of trauma have various needs and requirements be performed by emergency services and hospital staff and the ability to better predict the type of trauma can increase efficiency of the departments affected. This thesis acquired data from the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office which lists the dates and types of injuries the victims sustained. Homicide data was cross-tabulated with weather information obtained from the National Centers of Environmental Information to determine the maximum temperature for the day the incident occurred. Chi-square and ANOVA analyses were performed to determine if weather had any significant effect on weapons used, firearm, blunt force, sharp force, asphyxia, and thermal, to commit homicide and no significant correlation was found with regards to temperature or precipitation and when both weapons and the victims’ race and sex are considered with temperature.