Page 7 - Case study: Crime prediction for more agile policing in cities – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

1. Introduction

1.1. Background

Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the second-most populous municipality in Brazil and the sixth-most
populous in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area and
is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's third-most populous state. Part of the city has
been designated as a World Heritage Site, named "Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the
Mountain and the Sea", by UNESCO on 1 July 2012 as a Cultural Landscape.

Rio de Janeiro is headquarters to Brazilian oil, mining, and telecommunications companies,
including two of the country's major corporations – Petrobras and Vale – and Latin America's largest
telemedia conglomerate, Grupo Globo. Being the home of many universities and institutes, Rio
is the second-largest center of research and development in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is also one of
the most visited cities in the Southern Hemisphere and is known for its natural settings, including
several beaches.

There are significant disparities between the rich and the poor in Rio de Janeiro, and different
socioeconomic groups are largely segregated into different neighborhoods. Although the city is
ranked as among one of the world’s most populated metropolises, a large number of its inhabitants
live in slums known as favelas. There have been a number of government initiatives to counter
this problem, from the removal of the population from favelas to housing projects such as Cidade
de Deus to the more recent approach of improving conditions in the favelas and bringing them
up to par with the rest of the city, as well as the development of the "Favela Bairro" program and
deployment of Pacifying Police Units .
1

1.2. Challenge and response

Crime in Brazil involves an elevated incidence of violent and non-violent crimes. According to a
study by the Brazilian Forum of Public Security (a research organization), 63,880 people were
murdered in Brazil in 2017, up 3 percent from the year before, resulting in 175 deaths per day . The
2
research indicates that the murder rate in the country was 30.8 per 100,000 people, up from 29.9 in
2016. In comparison to the United States, it had five homicides per 100,000 people in 2015 — down
from eight per 100,000 in 1996. Mexico, which is also suffering from a soaring murder rate, had less
homicides per capita than Brazil with 25 per 100,000 last year .
3
Despite the high perception of crime in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, being one of the most populated cities
of the country, has a lower crime rate than Northeast Brazil. However, it is far more criminalized
than the southern region of Brazil, which is considered to be the safest region in the country .
4
Therefore, the challenge for Rio de Janeiro was to predict crime and implement more agile policies
to lower crime rate. The response has been to develop a digital platform to predict crimes based on
available past crime data and also avail it as an app for residents and visitors of the city.

Crime prediction for more agile policing in cities – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1