Graph Model of Environmental Backcloth

Environmental criminology has looked at how the behaviors of people, including offenders and victims, are influenced by surrounding environmental factors. The environmental backcloth, such as a road network or areas of different land uses, sets the framework for people's daily activities. Within the backcloth, there exists a connectedness of elements and layers that describe the environmental features within their varying states (static, dynamic, temporal). This paper proposes a graph model of the environmental backcloth. The development of the framework for this graph model is described, and the case studies that use this framework are presented. The benefits of using the graph model of the environmental backcloth are discussed. Some features of the framework include applying graph and social network analysis algorithms to the graph model, interactive visualization, and implementing/applying algorithms to the model.