2017 6th IIAI International Congress on Advanced Applied Informatics
Using Machine Learning to Assist Crime Prevention
Ying-Lung Lin
Department of Information Management
Yuan Ze University
Taoyuan City, Taiwan
fxm900206216@gmail.com
Liang-Chih Yu
Department of Information Management
Yuan Ze University
Taoyuan City, Taiwan
lcyu@saturn.yzu.edu.tw
Abstract—Drug-related criminal activity is gradually rising
in Taiwan and has a significant and negative social impact.
This paper proposes a data-driven method based on “broken
windows” theory and spatial analysis to analyze crime data
using machine mining algorithms and thus predict emerging
crime hotspots for additional police attention.
The Deep Learning algorithm has been widely applied in
several fields, include image recognition and natural language
processing. With fine tuning, we find the Deep Learning
algorithm provides better prediction results than other
methods including Random Forest, and Naïve Bayes for
potential crime hotspots. Furthermore, we improve model
performance by accumulating data with different time scales.
To validate experimental results, we visualize potential crime
hotspots on a map, and observe whether the models can
identify true hotspots. Finally, we discuss the applicability of
this method, and present future research directions.
Keywords—Crime prevention; Machine learning; Spatial
analysis
I. INTRODUCTION
Drug-related crime is gradually increasing in Taiwan, and
the police require more powerful tools to combat and prevent
such crimes. Traditional approaches are highly dependent on
the experience of senior police officers, which presents
challenges for generalizing methods and information. Junior
police officers lack sufficient experience to identify potential
crime hotspots, thus losing opportunities to prevent crime.
We present a data-driven method based on “broken
windows” theory and spatial analysis. Broken windows theory
posits that failure to respond to low level criminal activity in an
area will lead to more serious crimes. Based on this theory, we
design a model that predicts the incidence of drug-related
crime in the following month based on incidence of drug-
related crime, fraud, assault, intimidation, auto theft, and
burglary in the current month. Accordingly, we can extend the
model with its spatial-temporal characteristics. Let each grid
which splitting from the map regard as a sample, and
accumulates samples in the same time scale to construct
matrices. Each matrix represents different spatial-temporal
status, thus, we can use the matrix to train and test by machine
learning algorithms.
II. METHOD
As shown by the workflow in Fig. 1, we spilt the map into
grids, at different scales: 500m*500m (10,843 cells),
750m*750m (4,877 cells) and 1000m*1000m (2,817 cells). We
then combined 56 features with eight different types of crime
and seven different spatial-temporal patterns including current
978-0-7695-6178-3/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE
978-1-5386-0621-6/17
DOI 10.1109/IIAI-AAI.2017.46
Tenge-Yang Chen
Intelligence Integrated Center
New Taipei City Police Department
New Taipei City, Taiwan
sha3098@gmail.com
month, following month, last year, grids surrounded eight-
direction in the current month, grids surrounded eight-direction
last year, tendency, proportion.
After calculating the value for each feature in the grids, we
set drug crime for the following month as the dependent
variable. We want to predict crime hotspots for the following
month, which are thus not in the same temporal environment.
Empty grids are removed to prevent model performance
degradation. For the different time scales, we design 7 sets of
accumulated data over 1, 3, 6, 9,12, 15, and 18 months.
We next prepared the data frames to train the models.
Experiments were run using different algorithms (Deep
Learning, Random Forest, and Naïve Bayes) to compare
prediction results against the proposed method. Naïve Bayes is
a simple algorithm based on Bayes’ theorem. Random Forest is
an ensemble algorithm based on decision trees. Deep Learning
is a more recently developed algorithm which provides
outstanding performance in several fields, include image
recognition and natural language processing Deep Learning
operates using Artificial Neural Networks and thus benefits
from improved computing capability to perform more complex
calculations and improve model tuning.
Fig. 1. Spatial-temporal analysis workflow.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3 & 4
g1 1
g2
g1
g3 g4
g4
Step 1: Split the map Mġby grids gn,ġMġľ焊g1ĭg2ĭg3ĭɃĭgn焌.
Step 2: Each grid g has the features fn , gġľ焊f1ĭf2ĭf3ĭɃĭfn焌, and calculate
the value of each feature in the grid.
Step 3: Drug-related crimes which will happen in the following month are
denoted as Y.
If no drug-related crime occurs in the grid, the grid is a coldspot, and
Y = 0.
Otherwise, the grid is a hotspot, and Y =ġ1.
Step 4: If the sum of the grid is zero, it’s an empty grid that should be
removed.
Finally, we evaluated model performance in terms of
accuracy, precision, recall and f-measure. We want to find the
high accuracy and high f-measure results. Accuracy refers to
how correctly the model predicts hotspots and coldspots
1026
1029
overall, and f-measure represents the model’s ability to find the
correctly hotspots.
Fig. 2. Configuration of Deep Learning algorithm.
Layers Configuration
Input layer : 56 Activation function : Rectifier
Hidden layer : 40,40,30,30,20,20 Learning rate :0.001
Output layer : 2 Epochs :30
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. Data and Analysis Tools
We use the R and h2o package in this experiment, and use
actual crime data to validate results. Model prediction results
are then visualized with QGIS. Unfortunately, we are unable
to release the data due to its sensitive nature, but experimental
results are available on Github(https://goo.gl/qVoHDo).
B. Performance of Different Grid Areas
As shown in Fig. 3, larger grids provide better performance.
The number of grids decreases as grid area increases, thus
raising the probability of the grid being a hotspot. Although
model performance increases with grid area, larger areas make
it difficult for police to precisely locate the hotspot, thus
reducing practical utility.
Tuning the model with the Deep Learning algorithm
(configurations as shown in Fig. 2) provides the best
performance, the accuracy, precision, recall and f-measure
decrease less than other algorithms. In contrast, the standard
methods which let hotspots last month as hotspots next month,
it’s recall decreases sharply.
Fig. 3. Average performance of different grid areas.
C. Performance of Accumulating Time Scales
As shown in Fig. 4, accumulated data allows the models to
learn from past periods, thus slightly improving the
performance of all models. Deep Learning provides the best
performance in accumulating 15 months worth of data,
producing a clear improvement in accuracy and f-measure.
Fig. 4. Average performance of accumulating time scales.
1030
1027
D. Visualization
As shown in Fig. 5, predicted and actual hotspots were
plotted on a map. We found that the model accurately predicts
most hotspots, thus validating its utility.
Fig. 5. Visualization maps of drug-related crime hotspots.
(1)Actual hotspots (2)Predicted hotspotsġ
ġġ
(3)Actual hotspotsġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġġ(4) Predicted hotspots
ġġ
IV. CONCLUSION
We demonstrate a machine learning method designed to
provide improved prediction of future crime hotspots, with
results validated by actual crime data. The model tuned using
Deep Learning provides the best performance. Visualizations
of predicted hotspots can assist patrol planning and improve
crime prevention.
Effectively combating and preventing drug-related
crime requires continuous improvements to data-driven
methods. Future efforts will seek to integrate additional data
sources reflecting economic and traffic condition to better
simulate actual conditions. Additional sources of unstructured
data, such as narrative reports, could thus potentially be
integrated to further improve crime prevention efforts.
REFERENCES
[1] Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. “Broken windows.” Critical issues in
policing: Contemporary readings, pp. 395-407, 1982.
[2] Chen, H., Chung, W., Xu, J. J., Wang, G., Qin, Y., & Chau, M. “Crime
data mining: a general framework and some examples.”Computer, 37(4),
pp. 50-56. , 2004.
[3] Yu, C. H., Ward, M. W., Morabito, M., & Ding, W. “Crime forecasting
using data mining techniques.” In Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW),
2011 IEEE 11th International Conference, pp. 779-786, December 2011.
[4] Yu, C. H., Ding, W., Chen, P., & Morabito, M. “Crime forecasting using
spatio-temporal pattern with ensemble learning.” In Pacific-Asia
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Springer
International Publishing, pp. 174-185, May 2014.
[5] Wang, D., Ding, W., Lo, H., Stepinski, T., Salazar, J., & Morabito, M.
“Crime hotspot mapping using the crime related factors—a spatial data
mining approach.” Applied intelligence, 39(4), pp. 772-781, 2013.
[6] Murray, A. T., McGuffog, I., Western, J. S., & Mullins, P. “Exploratory
spatial data analysis techniques for examining urban crime implications
for evaluating treatment.” British Journal of criminology, 41(2), pp. 309-
329, 2001.
[7] Candel, A., Parmar, V., LeDell, E., & Arora, A. “Deep Learning with
H2O.” H2O.ai Inc., 2016.