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.

Simulating Burglary - Working Paper

I have just finished a working paper entitled "Simulating Burglary with an Agent-Based Model", available here. It reports some results of my initial burglary prototype. This model uses relatively simple burglar agents and a grid-based virtual environment but is a good introduction to the more complex model that I'm developing for my PhD.

The following video shows an early prototype in action. The burglar agents are yellow and other people (home owners) are blue. Initially some of the burglars go to work in the green area, but often employment doesn't provide them with enough money and they choose to burgle instead. This is a vast simplification of real behaviour and will be improved in later developments, but works well as a proof-of-concept prototype.