DEEP LEARNING FOR CRIME PREDICTION

In this research, we propose to use deep learning to predict crimes in small neighborhoods (regions) of a city, by using historical crime data collected from the past. The motivation of crime predictions is that if we can predict the number crimes that will occur in a certain week then the city officials and law enforcement can prepare resources and manpower more effectively. Due to inherent connections between geographic regions and crime activities, the crime numbers in different regions (with respect to different time periods) are often correlated. Such correlation brings challenges and opportunities to employ deep learning to learn features from historical data for accurate prediction of the future crime numbers for each neighborhood. To leverage crime correlations between different regions, we convert crime data into a heat map, to show the intensity of crime numbers and the geographical distributions. After that, we design a deep learning framework to learn from such heat map for prediction.
In our study, we look at the crime reported in twenty different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Canada over a twenty week period and predict the total crime count that will occur in the future. We will look at the number of crimes per week that have occurred in the span of ten weeks and predict the crime count for the following weeks.
The location of where the crimes occur is extracted from a database and plotted onto a heat map. The model we are using to predict the crime count consists of a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) and a LSTM (Long-Short Term Memory) network attached to the CNN. The purpose of the CNN is to train the model spatially and understand where crimes occur in the images. The LSTM is used to train the model temporally and help us understand which week the crimes occur in time. By feeding the model heat map images of crime hot spots into the CNN and LSTM network, we will be able to predict the crime count and the most likely locations of the crimes for future weeks.