Spatio-temporal Crime Prediction Model Based on Analysis of Crime Clusters
Master’s Thesis, Middle East Technical University, September 2007
Esra Polat
“Crime is a behavior disorder that is an integrated result of social, economical and environmental factors. In the world today crime analysis is gaining significance and one of the most popular subject is crime prediction. Stakeholders of crime intend to forecast the place, time, number of crimes and crime types to get precautions. With respect to these intentions, in this thesis a spatio-temporal crime prediction model is generated by using time series forecasting with simple spatial disaggregation approach in Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
“The model is generated by utilizing crime data for the year 2003 in Bahçelievler and Merkez Çankaya police precincts. Methodology starts with obtaining clusters with different clustering algorithms. Then clustering methods are compared in terms of land-use and representation to select the most appropriate clustering algorithms. Later crime data is divided into daily apoch, to observe spatiotemporal distribution of crime.
“In order to predict crime in time dimension a time series model (ARIMA) is fitted for each week day, Then the forecasted crime occurrences in time are disagregated according to spatial crime cluster patterns.
“Hence the model proposed in this thesis can give crime prediction in both space and time to help police departments in tactical and planning operations.”
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