CrimeMind: Simulating Urban Crime with Multi-Modal LLM Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zeng, Qingbin, Zhao, Ruotong, Mao, Jinzhu, Li, Haoyang, Xu, Fengli, Li, Yong
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Zeng, Qingbin
Zhao, Ruotong
Mao, Jinzhu
Li, Haoyang
Xu, Fengli
Li, Yong
author_facet Zeng, Qingbin
Zhao, Ruotong
Mao, Jinzhu
Li, Haoyang
Xu, Fengli
Li, Yong
contents Modeling urban crime is an important yet challenging task that requires understanding the subtle visual, social, and cultural cues embedded in urban environments. Previous work has mainly focused on rule-based agent-based modeling (ABM) and deep learning methods. ABMs offer interpretability of internal mechanisms but exhibit limited predictive accuracy. In contrast, deep learning methods are often effective in prediction but are less interpretable and require extensive training data. Moreover, both lines of work lack the cognitive flexibility to adapt to changing environments. Leveraging the capabilities of large language models (LLMs), we propose CrimeMind, a novel LLM-driven ABM framework for simulating urban crime within a multi-modal urban context. A key innovation of our design is the integration of the Routine Activity Theory (RAT) into the agentic workflow of CrimeMind, enabling it to process rich multi-modal urban features and reason about criminal behavior. However, RAT requires LLM agents to infer subtle cues in evaluating environmental safety as part of assessing guardianship, which can be challenging for LLMs. To address this, we collect a small-scale human-annotated dataset and align CrimeMind's perception with human judgment via a training-free textual gradient method. Experiments across four major U.S. cities demonstrate that CrimeMind outperforms both traditional ABMs and deep learning baselines in crime hotspot prediction and spatial distribution accuracy, achieving up to a 24% improvement over the strongest baseline. Furthermore, we conduct counterfactual simulations of external incidents and policy interventions and it successfully captures the expected changes in crime patterns, demonstrating its ability to reflect counterfactual scenarios. Overall, CrimeMind enables fine-grained modeling of individual behaviors and facilitates evaluation of real-world interventions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_05981
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CrimeMind: Simulating Urban Crime with Multi-Modal LLM Agents
Zeng, Qingbin
Zhao, Ruotong
Mao, Jinzhu
Li, Haoyang
Xu, Fengli
Li, Yong
Artificial Intelligence
Modeling urban crime is an important yet challenging task that requires understanding the subtle visual, social, and cultural cues embedded in urban environments. Previous work has mainly focused on rule-based agent-based modeling (ABM) and deep learning methods. ABMs offer interpretability of internal mechanisms but exhibit limited predictive accuracy. In contrast, deep learning methods are often effective in prediction but are less interpretable and require extensive training data. Moreover, both lines of work lack the cognitive flexibility to adapt to changing environments. Leveraging the capabilities of large language models (LLMs), we propose CrimeMind, a novel LLM-driven ABM framework for simulating urban crime within a multi-modal urban context. A key innovation of our design is the integration of the Routine Activity Theory (RAT) into the agentic workflow of CrimeMind, enabling it to process rich multi-modal urban features and reason about criminal behavior. However, RAT requires LLM agents to infer subtle cues in evaluating environmental safety as part of assessing guardianship, which can be challenging for LLMs. To address this, we collect a small-scale human-annotated dataset and align CrimeMind's perception with human judgment via a training-free textual gradient method. Experiments across four major U.S. cities demonstrate that CrimeMind outperforms both traditional ABMs and deep learning baselines in crime hotspot prediction and spatial distribution accuracy, achieving up to a 24% improvement over the strongest baseline. Furthermore, we conduct counterfactual simulations of external incidents and policy interventions and it successfully captures the expected changes in crime patterns, demonstrating its ability to reflect counterfactual scenarios. Overall, CrimeMind enables fine-grained modeling of individual behaviors and facilitates evaluation of real-world interventions.
title CrimeMind: Simulating Urban Crime with Multi-Modal LLM Agents
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05981