Unit: Local Government Area (LGA) in Victoria.
Measure: Rate per 100,000 population (plus raw incident counts).
Time window in file: 2021–2025 (latest: 2025).
One extreme rate was capped at 3457.9 using the IQR rule (Q3 + 1.5×IQR) to keep visuals readable and avoid distortion from outliers.

Why this: a concise summary of data scope and cleaning decisions builds clarity and transparency before visual exploration.

Victoria’s average incident rate declined in 2022, suggesting a brief period of improvement or recovery after earlier highs.
From 2023 onward, however, the trend reversed sharply, with rates rising each year and peaking in 2025.
This trajectory indicates that while short-term interventions may have had initial impact, the resurgence highlights the need for sustained, long-term prevention strategies.

Why trend line: clearly shows reversal after a temporary decline, emphasizing the need for durable intervention measures.

The heatmap shows that Mildura, Horsham, and East Gippsland consistently record the highest incident rates across all years, reflecting a persistent concentration of risk.
In contrast, LGAs such as Frankston and Colac-Otway maintain relatively lower rates, suggesting more stable or controlled local conditions.
Overall, this pattern highlights a clear geographic divide north-western and rural regions continue to face disproportionate burdens compared to metropolitan areas.

Why heatmap: exposes long-term regional inequalities by showing both persistence and spatial clustering of risk.

Key takeaways
- Mildura remains the highest-risk LGA, continuing its long-term position at the top of Victoria’s family-violence rate rankings.
- Several regional centres Latrobe, Horsham, and Greater Shepparton also record persistently high rates, all above 3,000 per 100,000 residents.
- The concentration of high-rate LGAs outside metro areas highlights regional inequality in safety and service access.

Why ranked bars: emphasizes magnitude and ranking clearly at a single point in time.

Risk (y) and volume (x) separate large-incident LGAs are not always the highest-risk.
Regional colours reveal clusters; for example, several western LGAs combine both high rate and volume.
Outliers are worth flagging for context, such as differences in policing, reporting, or population size.
This scatter format effectively separates rate from volume while also encoding geography through colour.

Why bubble scatter: distinguishes volume (x) from risk (y), coloured by region to reveal geographic clusters.

Western Region shows a steep rise in incident rates since 2023, now the highest across Victoria.
Eastern Region also trends upward, indicating sustained pressure in suburban and peri-urban LGAs.
By contrast, North West Metro and Southern Metro remain relatively stable and lower in rate, suggesting stronger urban intervention coverage.
This multi-line view compares regional trajectories without hiding year-to-year differences, revealing how rural and metro areas diverge over time.

Why multi-line: compares trajectories across regions without hiding the year-to-year motion.

The histogram shows most LGAs clustering between about 1,000–2,000 in rate per 100,000, indicating a typical statewide range.
The dashed line marks the median, so roughly half of LGAs fall below this threshold.
The orange cumulative-share curve (Lorenz-style) reveals inequality a small number of LGAs contribute a disproportionately large share of total incidents.
Using both views together highlights spread vs concentration: even if the average stabilizes, contribution remains uneven across LGAs.

Why panel: the histogram shows overall spread; the Lorenz-style cumulative curve shows concentration.

The animation reveals how LGA rates evolve dynamically across years, showing both rising and stabilizing patterns depending on the region. Western and Eastern police regions display consistently higher incident rates, suggesting persistent challenges in those areas. In contrast, North West Metro and Southern Metro LGAs remain relatively stable, reflecting stronger policy coverage or intervention outcomes. This animation captures temporal shifts effectively, allowing clear visual tracking of how local risks rise or fall over time

Why animation: highlights temporal movement across dozens of LGAs without overwhelming a static chart.