Spatio-temporal prediction of residential burglaries using convolutional LSTM neural networks

Abstract: The low amount solved residential burglary crimes calls for new and innovative methods in the prevention and investigation of the cases. There were 22 600 reported residential burglaries in Sweden 2017 but only four to five percent of these will ever be solved. There are many initiatives in both Sweden and abroad for decreasing the amount of occurring residential burglaries and one of the areas that are being tested is the use of prediction methods for more efficient preventive actions. This thesis is an investigation of a potential method of prediction by using neural networks to identify areas that have a higher risk of burglaries on a daily basis. The model use reported burglaries to learn patterns in both space and time. The rationale for the existence of patterns is based on near repeat theories in criminology which states that after a burglary both the burgled victim and an area around that victim has an increased risk of additional burglaries. The work has been conducted in cooperation with the Swedish Police authority. The machine learning is implemented with convolutional long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks with max pooling in three dimensions that learn from ten years of residential burglary data (2007-2016) in a study area in Stockholm, Sweden. The model's accuracy is measured by performing predictions of burglaries during 2017 on a daily basis. It classifies cells in a 36x36 grid with 600 meter square grid cells as areas with elevated risk or not. By classifying 4% of all grid cells during the year as risk areas, 43% of all burglaries are correctly predicted. The performance of the model could potentially be improved by further configuration of the parameters of the neural network, along with a use of more data with factors that are correlated to burglaries, for instance weather. Consequently, further work in these areas could increase the accuracy. The conclusion is that neural networks or machine learning in general could be a powerful and innovative tool for the Swedish Police authority to predict and moreover prevent certain crime. This thesis serves as a first prototype of how such a system could be implemented and used.