Low-rank bilinear autoregressive models for three-way criminal activity tensors

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Zens, Gregor, Díaz, Carlos, Durante, Daniele, Patacchini, Eleonora
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866914430617387008
author Zens, Gregor
Díaz, Carlos
Durante, Daniele
Patacchini, Eleonora
author_facet Zens, Gregor
Díaz, Carlos
Durante, Daniele
Patacchini, Eleonora
contents Criminal activity data are typically available via a three-way tensor encoding the reported frequencies of different crime categories across time and space. The challenges that arise in the design of interpretable, yet realistic, model-based representations of the complex dependencies within and across these three dimensions have led to an increasing adoption of black-box predictive strategies. While this perspective has proved successful in producing accurate forecasts guiding targeted interventions, the lack of interpretable model-based characterizations of the dependence structures underlying criminal activity tensors prevents from inferring the cascading effects of these interventions across the different dimensions. We address this gap through the design of a low-rank bilinear autoregressive model which achieves comparable predictive performance to black-box strategies, while allowing interpretable inference on the dependence structures of reported criminal activities across crime categories, time and space. This representation incorporates the time dimension via an autoregressive construction that accounts for spatial effects and dependencies among crime categories through a separable low-rank bilinear formulation. When applied to Chicago police reports, the proposed model showcases remarkable predictive performance and also reveals interpretable dependence structures unveiling fundamental crime dynamics. These results facilitate the design of more refined intervention policies informed by the cascading effects of the policy itself.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01166
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Low-rank bilinear autoregressive models for three-way criminal activity tensors
Zens, Gregor
Díaz, Carlos
Durante, Daniele
Patacchini, Eleonora
Applications
Criminal activity data are typically available via a three-way tensor encoding the reported frequencies of different crime categories across time and space. The challenges that arise in the design of interpretable, yet realistic, model-based representations of the complex dependencies within and across these three dimensions have led to an increasing adoption of black-box predictive strategies. While this perspective has proved successful in producing accurate forecasts guiding targeted interventions, the lack of interpretable model-based characterizations of the dependence structures underlying criminal activity tensors prevents from inferring the cascading effects of these interventions across the different dimensions. We address this gap through the design of a low-rank bilinear autoregressive model which achieves comparable predictive performance to black-box strategies, while allowing interpretable inference on the dependence structures of reported criminal activities across crime categories, time and space. This representation incorporates the time dimension via an autoregressive construction that accounts for spatial effects and dependencies among crime categories through a separable low-rank bilinear formulation. When applied to Chicago police reports, the proposed model showcases remarkable predictive performance and also reveals interpretable dependence structures unveiling fundamental crime dynamics. These results facilitate the design of more refined intervention policies informed by the cascading effects of the policy itself.
title Low-rank bilinear autoregressive models for three-way criminal activity tensors
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01166