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ABM4Crime


Call for Papers

ABM4Crime – Agent-Based Modelling for Criminological Research

Thematic track at the 18th EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Porto, Portugal)

URL: https://web.fe.up.pt/~epia2017/thematic-tracks/abm4crime/

*** Proceedings will be published in Spinger’s Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence ***

Background

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, management, causes, control, consequences, and prevention of criminal behaviour. Traditional criminological research methods use interviews, register data, observations, or may employ vignette studies. In addition to these methods, Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) has recently emerged as an innovative method to study crime. The aim of this workshop is to discuss both the benefits and possible drawback of ABM as a tool for criminology, as well as to identify its most promising application areas.

Agent-based modelling takes existing knowledge from the social sciences as point of departure and tries to formalise this knowledge in dynamic computational models. Using the appropriate software these models can be used to simulate human behaviour: virtual scenarios that (dynamically) simulate behaviour over time. These types of computer simulations offer opportunities to develop innovative methods and tools to better understand, predict and possibly even prevent deviant behaviour. Example applications are predicting the spatio-temporal dynamics of residential burglary, explaining the behaviour of street robbers, or simulating aggression management strategies for training purposes in law enforcement.

Workshop Aim

This workshop is intended for Agent-Based Modellers who are interested in Criminology as a potential application domain for their models, as well as for Social Scientist with an interest in ABM as a tool to study criminological questions. Example questions that may be addressed during the workshop include the following:

  • What is the main added value of Agent-Based Models for the field of Criminology?
  • Should the models be used to explain, predict, and/or prevent delinquent behaviour?
  • What are the most promising application domains?
  • Which ABM tools and techniques are most suitable?
  • How much detail is required to study the above questions?
  • How to validate ABMs against empirical data?

Topics of Interest

  • agent-based simulation
  • verification of agent-based models
  • ABM tools and techniques
  • virtual agents
  • empirical validation
  • ABMs for policy making
  • ABMs for crime prediction

Application Areas of Interest

  • spatio-temporal dynamics of crime
  • terrorism and terrorist networks
  • crowd dynamics, aggression in crowds
  • street robbery, residential burglary
  • organized crime
  • juvenile delinquency
  • aggression de-escalation

Submission and Proceedings

All papers should be submitted in PDF format through the EPIA 2017 EasyChair submission page. Prospective authors should select the thematic track to which their paper is to be submitted.

Submitted papers should be prepared according to the Springer LNCS format, with a maximum of 12 pages. Submitted papers will be subject to a double-blind review process, and will be peer-reviewed by at least three members of the respective track Program Committee. It is the responsibility of the authors to remove names and affiliations from the submitted papers, and to take reasonable care to assure anonymity during the review process.
Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings (a volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence), provided that at least one author is registered in EPIA 2017 by the early registration deadline. EPIA 2015 proceedings were indexed in Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science, Scopus, DBLP and Google Scholar.

Important dates

  • Paper submission: Apr 15, 2017
  • Paper acceptance: May 31, 2017
  • Camera-ready papers: Jun 15, 2017
  • Conference: Sep 5-8, 2017

Organising Committee

Charlotte Gerritsen, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, The Netherlands
Tibor Bosse, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corinna Elsenbroich, University of Surrey, United Kingdom

Program Committee

Daniel Birks, Griffith University Brisbane, Australia
Tibor Bosse, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Henk Elffers, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, the Netherlands
Corinna Elsenbroich, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
Vasco Furtado, University of Fortaleza, Brazil
Charlotte Gerritsen, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, The Netherlands
Elizabeth Groff, Temple University, United States
Nicola Lettieri, ISFOL Rome, Italy
Lin Liu, University of Cincinnati, United States
Nicholas Malleson, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Klaus Troitzsch, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Discussion

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