Dynamic Simulation Models for Crime Analysis and Urban Flows


Nick Malleson

Associate Professor

School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK

nickmalleson.co.uk

These slides: http://surf.leeds.ac.uk/presentations.html

Overview

Crime Simulation with Agent Based Modelling

Explanatory Agent-Based Crime Models

Predictive Agent-Based Crime Models

Modelling Broader Urban Dynamics

Quantifying Ambient Populations

Dynamic Data Assimilation

Part 1: Agent-based Crime Modelling

Why Model Crime?

Exploring theory ('explanatory' models)

Simulation as a virtual laboratory.

Linking theory with crime patterns to test it.

Making predictions ('predictive' models)

Forecasting the impacts of social / environmental change.

Exploring aspects of current data patterns.

Why is it Difficult?

Extremely complex system:

Attributes of the environment (e.g. individual houses, pubs, etc.).

Personal characteristics of the potential offender and/or victim.

Features of the local community.

Physical layout of the neighbourhood.

Potential offender’s knowledge of the environment.

Traditional approaches often work at large scales, struggle to predict local effects

"Computationally convenient".

But cannot capture non-linear, complex systems.

Diagram of regression

Introduction to ABM

Aggregate v.s. Individual

'Traditional' modelling methods work at an aggregate level, from the top-down

E.g. Regression, spatial interaction modelling, location-allocation, etc.

Aggregate models work very well in some situations

Homogeneous individuals

Interactions not important

Very large systems (e.g. pressure-volume gas relationship)

Diagram of regression

Introduction to ABM

Aggregate v.s. Individual

But they miss some important things:

Low-level dynamics, i.e. “smoothing out” (Batty, 2005)

Interactions and emergence

Individual heterogeneity

Unsuitable for modelling complex systems

Diagram of the sims

Introduction to ABM

Systems are driven by individuals

(cars, people, ants, trees, whatever)

Bottom-up modelling

An alternative approach to modelling

Rather than controlling from the top, try to represent the individuals

Account for system behaviour directly

Autonomous, interacting agents

Represent individuals or groups

Situated in a virtual environment

A termite mound.
Attribution: JBrew (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Emergence

One of the main attractions for ABM

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." (Aristotle?)

Simple rules → complex outcomes

E.g. who plans the air-conditioning in termite mounds?

Possible to prove the with simple computer programs

Conways 'Game of Life'

Emergence

Why is it important?

Key message: Complex structures can emerge from simple rules

Emergence is hard to anticipate, and cannot be deduced from solely analysis of an individual's behaviour

Individual-level modelling is focused on understanding how macro-level patterns emerge from micro-level through the process of simulation.

How is this relevant to crime?

Better Representations of Theory?

Environmental Criminology theories emphasise importance of

Individual behaviour (offenders, victims, guardians)

Individual geographical awareness

Environmental backcloth

Better Representations of Space?

Example of GIS data

Lots of research points to importance of micro-level environment

Brantinghams' environmental backcloth

Crime at places research (e.g. Eck and Weisburd, 1995; Weisburd and Amram, 2014; Andresen et al., 2016)

Agent-Based Modelling - Appeal

Modelling complexity, non-linearity, emergence

Natural description of a system

Bridge between verbal theories and mathematical models

Produces a history of the evolution of the system

Agent-Based Modelling - Difficulties

Will I play with the truck, or the duck?

(actually he played with his trains...)

Tendency towards minimal behavioural complexity

Stochasticity

Computationally expensive (not amenable to optimisation)

Complicated agent decisions, lots of decisions, multiple model runs

Modelling "soft" human factors

Need detailed, high-resolution, individual-level data

Individual-level data

An experiment:

Choose a number between 1 and 4 (inclusive)

Were you able to chose a number at random?

Or did most people choose the number 3?

Who else is doing this?

Small, but growing, literature

(apologies to the many who are missing!)

Birks et al. 2012, 2013;

Groff 2007a,b; Hayslett-McCall, 2008

Liu et al. (2005)

Me! (Malleson et. al ...)

A special issue of the Journal of Experimental Criminology entitled "Simulated Experiments in Criminology and Criminal Justice" (Groff and Mazerolle, 2008b)

ABM Explanatory Example (Birks 2012)

Birks (2012) model environment

Explanatory: exploring theory

Randomly generated abstract environments

Navigation nodes (proxy for transport network)

Potential targets (houses)

ABM Explanatory Example (Birks 2012)

One type of agent: potential offenders

Behaviour is controlled by theoretical 'switches'

Example crime theories

Rational choice perspective (decision to offend)

Routine activity theory (how they move and encounter targets)

Geometric theory of crime (how they learn about their environment)

ABM Explanatory Example (Birks 2012)

Validation against stylized facts:

Spatial crime concentration (Nearest Neighbour Index)

Repeat victimisation (Gini coefficient)

Journey to crime curve (journey to crime curve)

Results:

All theories increase accuracy of the model

Rational choice had a lower influence than the others

Simple / abstract model:

Not directly applicable to practice

But simplicity allows authors to concentrate on theoretical mechanisms

Realistic backcloth might over-complicate model (Elffers and van Baal, 2008)

ABM Predictive Example

Predictive: exploring the real world

ABM to explore the impacts of real-world policies

Urban regeneration in Leeds

Example of MasterMap Topographic data
Input layers into the virtual environment
PECS motives and actions
PECS motives and actions

ABM Predictive Example

Awareness space test

Did it work?

Aggregate results

Results of model calibration

Did it work?

Halton Moor

Malleson, N., A. Heppenstall, L. See, A. Evans (2013) Using an agent-based crime simulation to predict the effects of urban regeneration on individual household burglary risk. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 40 405-426. [DOI: 10.1068/b38057]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did it work?

Journey to Crime

Results of model calibration

ABM Predictive Example

Scenario Results

Malleson, N., A. Heppenstall, L. See, A. Evans (2013) Using an agent-based crime simulation to predict the effects of urban regeneration on individual household burglary risk. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 40 405-426. [DOI: 10.1068/b38057]

Part 2: Modelling Urban Dynamics

How many people are there in Trafalgar Square right now?

We need to better understand urban flows:

Crime – how many possible victims?

Pollution – who is being exposed? Where are the hotspots?

Economy – can we attract more people to our city centre?

Health - can we encourage more active travel?

Smart cities and the data deluge

Comparing census daytime populations to aggregate mobile phone estimates
Evaluating aggregate mobile phone population accuracy

Abundance of data about individuals and their environment

"Big data revolution" (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2013)

"Data deluge" (Kitchin, 2013a)

Smart cities

cities that "are increasingly composed of and monitored by pervasive and ubiquitous computing" (Kitchin, 2013a)

Large and growing literature

What about forecasting?

Abundance of real-time analysis, but limited forecasting. E.g.:

MassDOT Real Time Traffic Management system (Bond and Kanaan, 2015)

Detect vehicles with Bluetooth to analyse current traffic flows

Centro De Operacoes Prefeitura Do Rio (in Rio de Janeiro)

Advertise some predictive ability, but sparse detail

City dashboards

Forecasting ability is surprisingly absent in the literature

(correct me if I'm wrong!)

Why so little evidence of forecasting?

Proprietary systems? Company secrets?

A methodological gap?

Machine learning will probably help

E.g. short-term traffic forecasting (Vlahogianni et al. 2014)

But black box is a drawback - How to run diverse scenarios?

Maybe agent-based modelling could have the answer

The process of calibration
Typical model development process

Agent-Based Models of the Ambient Population

Agent-based modelling could do better?

Could combine diverse, up-to-date data with a model to create the most accurate estimate of the real world

But:

Urban systems are complex

They will diverge rapidly from model forecasts

ABM development typically uses 'waterfall' approach

We lack tools to calibrate models dynamically

Divergence

Complex systems

One-shot calibration

Nonlinear models predict near future well, but diverge over time.

Dynamic Data Assimilation

Used in meteorology and hydrology to constrain models closer to reality.

Try to improve estimates of the true system state by combining:

Noisy, real-world observations

Model estimates of the system state

Should be more accurate than data / observations in isolation.

Diagram of dynamic data assimilation and an ABM

Dynamic Data Assimilation

How?

Particle filters

Indoor footfall (Rai and Hu, 2013.; Wang and Hu, 2015)

Kalman Filter

Air traffic (Chen et al., 2012)

Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF)

Pedestrian footfall (Ward et al., 2016)

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)

Wildfire (Hu, 2011; Mandel et al., 2012)

Approximate Bayesian Computation

?

Early prototype:
Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF)

Maths

Broad literature, but generally tied to mathematical models (e.g. differential equations and linear functions)

Working with a mathematician to do the hard work!

In all its glory: Ward et al., (2016)

Advantages

Similar to Kalman Filter (best in class)

But better for nonlinear systems

Ensemble Kalman Filter - Basic Process

1. Forecast.

Run an ensemble of models (ABMs) forward in time.

Calculate ensemble mean and variance

2. Analysis.

New 'real' data are available

Integrate these data with the model forecasts to create estimate of model parameter(s)

Impact of new observations depends on their accuracy

3. Repeat

Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF)

Outline

Ward, J., A. Evans, N. Malleson (2016) Dynamic calibration of agent-based models using data assimilation. Royal Society Open Science. 3:150703. (open access). [DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150703]

Related Projects

Understanding and Quantifying Uncertainty in Individual-Based Models for Smart City Forecasts

Related Projects

Understanding and Quantifying Uncertainty in Individual-Based Models for Smart City Forecasts

Related Projects

Understanding Input Data Requirements for Successfully Modelling Cities

How much information about a city do we need to simulate it within acceptable levels of uncertainty?

Method:

Simple hypothetical city ABM

Generate 'truth' data

Take noisy samples from 'truth'

How much data do we need?

Agent-Based Urban Modelling

ESRC Logo

Current Research

Simulating Urban Flows (surf)

3 year research project funded by the UK ESRC

Modelling a small town, using real footfall counters (more on this next...)

One of the aims: calibrate an urban ABM using streaming data

Turns out this is really hard!

Agent-Based Urban Modelling

ESRC Logo

New project: Data Assimilation for Agent-Based Models (dust)

5-year research project (€1.5M)

Funded by the European Research Council (Starting Grant)

Started in January

Main aim: create new methods for dynamically assimilating data into agent-based models.

Opportunity: Fully-Funded PhD Scholarships

Start: October 2018

Fully-funded (fees and stipend) for four years

1. Developing Model Ensembles and Emulators for Next-Generation City Simulation

2. Agent-Based Modelling of Smart Cities

http://surf.leeds.ac.uk/blog.html

Summary

Dynamic Simulation - Agent Based Modelling

Explanatory Agent-Based Crime Models

Predictive Agent-Based Crime Models

Modelling Broader Urban Dynamics

Quantifying ambient Populations

Dynamic Data Assimilation

Dynamic Simulation Models for Crime Analysis and Urban Flows


Nick Malleson

Associate Professor

School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK

nickmalleson.co.uk

These slides: http://surf.leeds.ac.uk/presentations.html