Wednesday, 4 March 2009

Simulation case studies in Vancouver

In January - February this year I was able to visit the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies (ICURS) at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, to work with expert criminologists Pat and Paul Brantingham. I was able to run a prototype of my simulation on Vancouver to see how crime rates might change if a new rapid-transit rail line was built.

There is a short presentation which has lots of information about how I used the Vancouver data to configure the model and the results of the case studies themselves. As an example, the following figure illustrates how space syntax analysis can be used to estimate how busy a road might be and therefore how easy it would be for a burglar agent to gain access to a property without being seen by passers-by.