Edinburgh Law School academics triumphant in hackathon exploring the relationship between crowds and safety

Dr Ben Matthews (Research Fellow in Criminology) and Dr Fernando Pantoja Nunez (Research Fellow in Safer Communities) of Edinburgh Law School were part of the winning team at the "Exploring the relationship between Crowds, Safety and Crime" hackathon, hosted by the University of Manchester and supported by the International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences.

The crowds and safety themed hackathon took place between 9 - 11 December 2020 and allowed participants to explore the relationship between safety, crowding, and the environment.

Over the 48 hours, Ben and Fernando analysed crime patterns around Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games, including whether crime increased after wins or losses, whether larger crowds meant to more crime and whether effects were clustered around Dodgers stadium or were seen city-wide.

The aim of the hackathon was to make use of publicly available data on crowding, crime, and safety to better understand what is it about a crowded environment which makes it unsafe. To evaluate this, Ben and Fernando referred to the data sources provided, to answer questions such as "Does congestion lead to more accidents?", "Do crowded areas experience more robbery?" and "Are there environmental features or characteristics which aggregate or mitigate this relationship?".

As part of the winning team, our Law School academics were awarded a prize of shopping vouchers.

Find out more about the hackaton.