The NETIAM workshop on modelling criminality in the urban environment was held at Firenze in Italy on 7-8th June 2004.

Overview

This was the first workshop to be held under the EC project NETIAM (New and Emerging Technologies in Applied Mathematics), which emphasizes new and emerging applications of mathematics in the real world.

Aims

The aims of the workshop were to identify those mathematical methodologies that have greatest potential to predict how social and economic factors can affect criminality, at least on the scale of a single urban community, and to provide an insight toward the dynamics of diffusion and development (with respect to space and time coordinates) of criminal behaviour.

Topics of discussion

Candidate approaches to the modelling of criminality broadly adopt methodologies that fall into three general categories:

• Game theory
• Agent-based modelling
• Population dynamics