ABSTRACT
Street robbery is a common crime observable in almost all parts of the world. These crimes usually involve the use of some coercion towards a vulnerable victim by a motivated offender. To describe these events, the routine activity theory presents the triad that promotes the fertile context in which the crimes present a higher probability of occurring: the motivated offender, the absence of guardianship (or vigilance) and the vulnerable victim. Based on this theory, we have proposed an agent-based model for the context of a small city centre in South East Brazil. Our work shows that our model reflects the tendencies of crimes according to the time of day, and the quantity after fine-tuning its parameters using a parameter-sweeping approach. The work is an initial effort to generate and validate a model useful for crime prevention and guiding governmental decisions regarding public safety.
