Tibor Bosse, Charlotte Gerritsen, Mark Hoogendoorn, Syed Waqar Jaffry, Jan Treur. Comparison of Agent-Based and Population-Based Simulations of Displacement of Crime. In Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia, December 9-12, 2008. pages 469-476, IEEE, 2008. [doi]
Within Criminology, the process of crime displacement is usually explained by referring to the interaction of three types of agents: criminals, passers-by, and guardians. Most existing simulation models of this process are agent-based. However, when the number of agents considered becomes large, population-based simulation has computational advantages over agent-based simulation. This paper presents both an agent-based and a population-based simulation model of crime displacement, and reports a comparative evaluation of the two models. In addition, an approach is put forward to analyse the behaviour of both models by means of formal techniques.