Exploring counterfactual antecedents to reduce criminality

Abstract

This research project developed a series of methodologies to help identifying urban, socioeconomic and space-temporal factors that lead to crime. Our research had four main pillars: (1) Hotspot analysis was used to investigate possible ways to define what is a crime hotspot, in other words, how to define the size and area of geographical area to designate resources to reduce criminality; (2) Space-temporal analysis was used to understand the space and time correlations on crime; (3) Socioeconomic analysis was used to identify the main social and economical variables that affect crime; (4) Counterfactual analysis was used to understand which variables we should change on which magnitude we should change it to reduce significantly the crime in a certain location. All of these analysis where integrated in distinct visualization tools to help users to understand and have insights about crime in order to plan actions to reduce criminality.