Uso de redes complexas para análise da relação entre a topologia urbana de cidades de Minas Gerais e a ocorrência de crimes de rua

Abstract

Crimes represent complex social challenges, and there is a wide range of studies aimed at explaining them. Understanding them is a crucial step for implementing effective measures to combat crime. Currently, public security agencies in the state of Minas Gerais record the spatiotemporal information of crimes, specifically street crimes, in their reports, which allows these incidents to be analyzed, including considering the urban structure of their respective cities. The aim of this study was to characterize the urban structure of each city as a complex network and correlate this structure with the location of these crimes. The cities involved in this project are: Alfenas, Itabira, Itajubá, João Monlevade, Lavras, Ouro Preto, São João Del Rei, and Viçosa, due to the ease of accessing data from these municipalities and their similar population sizes. An approach using complex networks and their centrality measures is employed to understand the spatial concentration of street crimes in these cities over the period from 2014 to 2022. The results show that the closeness centrality measure has the highest correlation with areas of criminal concentration.