Overview
Crime occurrences are driven by a complicated mix of distinct influences, including those of the environment, the surrounding social context, and personal behavior/psychology of the people who could influence a crime event. Agent-based modelling is a methodology used in computer simulation that concentrates on individual-level behaviors and is ideally suited to modelling crime. This is particularly true of crimes such as burglary or street crime, which are heavily influenced by environmental factors and by the behavior of individual people. In an agent-based crime model, virtual “agents” are placed in an environment that allows them to travel through space and time, behaving as they would do in the real world. This entry will discuss why the crime system is such an ideal candidate for agent-based models and will review a number of crime models that have recently arisen.
Introduction
Individual crime occurrences are caused by a complicated mix of factors, including – but not...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Recommended Reading and References
Andresen M, Malleson N (2011) Testing the stability of crime patterns: implications for theory and policy. J Res Crime Del 48:58–82
Bonabeau E (2002) Agent-based modeling: methods and techniques for simulating human systems. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99(90003):7280–7287
Brantingham PL, Brantingham PJ (1993) Nodes, paths and edges: considerations on the complexity of crime and the physical environment. J Environ Psychol 13(1):3–28
Brantingham P, Brantingham PJ (2004) Computer simulation as a tool for environmental criminologists. Secur J 17:21–30
Castle C, Crooks A (2006) Principles and concepts of agent-based modelling for developing geospatial simulations, UCL working paper series. Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, London
Chainey S, Ratcliffe J (eds) (2005) GIS and crime mapping, 1st edn. Wiley, Chichester
Clarke RV (1995) Situational crime prevention. Crime Justice 19:91–150
Dray A, Mazerolle L, Perez P, Ritter A (2008) Policing Australia’s ‘heroin drought’: using an agent-based model to simulate alternative outcomes. J Exp Criminol 4(3):267–287
Eck JE, Liu L (2008) Contrasting simulated and empirical experiments in crime prevention. J Exp Criminol 4(3):195–213
Eck JE, Weisburd D (1995) Crime and place, volume 4 of crime prevention studies. Criminal Justice Press, Monsey
Edmonds B, Moss S (2005) From KISS to KIDS: an ‘anti-simplistic’ modelling approach. In: Davidsson P, Logan B, Takadama K (eds) Multi agent based simulation. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 130–144
Elffers H, van Baal P (2008) Realistic spatial backcloth is not that important in agent based simulation research: an illustration from simulating perceptual deterrence. In: Eck JE, Liu L (eds) Artificial Crime Analysis Systems: Using Computer Simulations and Geographic Information Systems. Information Science Reference, Hershey
Evans A (2011) Uncertainty and error. In: Heppenstall AJ, Crooks A, Batty M (eds) Agent-based models for geographical systems. Springer, Dordrecht
Gilbert N, Terna P (2000) How to build and use agent-based models in social science. Mind Society 1(1):57–72
Groff ER (2007) Simulation for theory testing and experimentation: an example using routine activity theory and street robbery. J Quant Criminol 23(2):75–103
Groff E, Mazerolle L (2008) Simulated experiments and their potential role in criminology and criminal justice. J Exp Criminol 4(Special Issue):187–193
Hayslett-McCall K, Qui F, Curtin KM, Chastain B, Schubert J, Carver V (2008) The simulation of the journey to residential burglary. In: Liu L, Eck J (eds) Artificial crime analysis systems: using computer simulations and geographic information systems. Information Science Reference, Hershey
Liu L, Eck J (2008) Artificial crime analysis systems: using computer simulations and geographic information systems. Information Science Reference, Hershey
Macal CM, North MJ (2005) Tutorial on agent-based modelling and simulation. In: Kuhl ME, Steiger NM, Armstrong FB, Joines JA (eds) Proceedings of the 2005 winter simulation conference. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Piscataway, pp 2–15
Malleson N, See L, Evans A, Heppenstall A (2010) Implementing comprehensive offender behaviour in a realistic agent-based model of burglary. SIMULATION. Published online before print: http://sim.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/20/0037549710384124
Malleson N, Evans A, Heppenstall A, See L (2011) Crime from the ground-up: agent-based models of burglary. Geogr Compass (forthcoming)
Moss S, Edmonds B (2005) Towards good social science. J Artif Soc Soc Simulat 8
O’Sullivan D, Haklay M (2000) Agent-based models and individualism: is the world agent-based? Environ Plann A 32(8):1409–1425
Schelling T (1969) Models of segregation. Am Econ Rev 59:488–493
Wooldridge MJ (2009) An introduction to multiagent systems. Wiley, Chichester
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Malleson, N., Evans, A. (2014). Agent-Based Models to Predict Crime at Places. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_208
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_208
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5689-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5690-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law