Behavioral Characterization of Criminality Spread in Cities

Abstract Complex networks are commonly used to model urban street networks, which allows aiding the analysis of criminal activities in cities. Despite several works focusing on such application, there is a lack of a clear methodology focused in the analysis of crime behavior. In this sense, we propose a methodology for employing complex networks in the analysis of criminality spread within criminal areas of a city. Here, we evaluate synthetic cases of crime propagation concerning real criminal data from the North American city of San Francisco — CA. Our results confirm the effectiveness of our methodology in analyzing the crime behavior by means of criminality spread. Hence, this paper renders further development and planning on public safety in cities.