Deep Learning for Crime Forecasting: The Role of Mobility at Fine-grained Spatiotemporal Scales

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zumel, Ariadna Albors, Tizzoni, Michele, Campedelli, Gian Maria
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914056273657856
author Zumel, Ariadna Albors
Tizzoni, Michele
Campedelli, Gian Maria
author_facet Zumel, Ariadna Albors
Tizzoni, Michele
Campedelli, Gian Maria
contents Objectives: To develop a deep learning framework to evaluate if and how incorporating micro-level mobility features, alongside historical crime and sociodemographic data, enhances predictive performance in crime forecasting at fine-grained spatial and temporal resolutions. Methods: We advance the literature on computational methods and crime forecasting by focusing on four U.S. cities (i.e., Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia). We employ crime incident data obtained from each city's police department, combined with sociodemographic data from the American Community Survey and human mobility data from Advan, collected from 2019 to 2023. This data is aggregated into grids with equally sized cells of 0.077 sq. miles (0.2 sq. kms) and used to train our deep learning forecasting model, a Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) network, which predicts crime occurrences 12 hours ahead using 14-day and 2-day input sequences. We also compare its performance against three baseline models: logistic regression, random forest, and standard LSTM. Results: Incorporating mobility features improves predictive performance, especially when using shorter input sequences. Noteworthy, however, the best results are obtained when both mobility and sociodemographic features are used together, with our deep learning model achieving the highest recall, precision, and F1 score in all four cities, outperforming alternative methods. With this configuration, longer input sequences enhance predictions for violent crimes, while shorter sequences are more effective for property crimes. Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of integrating diverse data sources for spatiotemporal crime forecasting, mobility included. They also highlight the advantages (and limits) of deep learning when dealing with fine-grained spatial and temporal scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_20913
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Learning for Crime Forecasting: The Role of Mobility at Fine-grained Spatiotemporal Scales
Zumel, Ariadna Albors
Tizzoni, Michele
Campedelli, Gian Maria
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Objectives: To develop a deep learning framework to evaluate if and how incorporating micro-level mobility features, alongside historical crime and sociodemographic data, enhances predictive performance in crime forecasting at fine-grained spatial and temporal resolutions. Methods: We advance the literature on computational methods and crime forecasting by focusing on four U.S. cities (i.e., Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia). We employ crime incident data obtained from each city's police department, combined with sociodemographic data from the American Community Survey and human mobility data from Advan, collected from 2019 to 2023. This data is aggregated into grids with equally sized cells of 0.077 sq. miles (0.2 sq. kms) and used to train our deep learning forecasting model, a Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) network, which predicts crime occurrences 12 hours ahead using 14-day and 2-day input sequences. We also compare its performance against three baseline models: logistic regression, random forest, and standard LSTM. Results: Incorporating mobility features improves predictive performance, especially when using shorter input sequences. Noteworthy, however, the best results are obtained when both mobility and sociodemographic features are used together, with our deep learning model achieving the highest recall, precision, and F1 score in all four cities, outperforming alternative methods. With this configuration, longer input sequences enhance predictions for violent crimes, while shorter sequences are more effective for property crimes. Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of integrating diverse data sources for spatiotemporal crime forecasting, mobility included. They also highlight the advantages (and limits) of deep learning when dealing with fine-grained spatial and temporal scales.
title Deep Learning for Crime Forecasting: The Role of Mobility at Fine-grained Spatiotemporal Scales
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20913