Integrating social, environmental and mobility factors in studying violence in the city of Chicago

Dissertation proposal presentation of Matthias Schilli: Violence has been studied as a social and public health issue for a long time. We investigate the violence in the City of Chicago by integrating social, environmental, and mobility factors in spatial statistical models. The social determinants will be based on a large number of social variables. The environmental criminological factors will be based on the Points of Interest (POI) data that provides information on the density and proximity of human activity convergence. The human mobility pattern in the city will be considered. The spatial and temporal patterns of violence in the city will be studied first, and then all the factors will be integrated into spatial statistical models to understand how they contribute to the violence variation in the city. It is expected that this study can contribute to a more integrative approach than the public health and spatial criminological approaches to violence prevention.