Risk Terrain Modeling (Criminology)
Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) represents crime risk as a function of the environment: it identifies the features of a landscape — bars, bus stops, vacant lots, pawn shops, schools — that attract or generate crime, maps each one's spatial influence as a separate risk layer, and combines those layers onto a raster of place to produce a relative risk surface. Introduced by Joel Caplan and Leslie Kennedy around 2011, RTM 'brokers' environmental criminology theory and GIS methods so that crime forecasting rests on the qualities of places rather than on the history of crime alone.
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Sources
- Caplan, J. M., Kennedy, L. W., & Miller, J. (2011). Risk terrain modeling: Brokering criminological theory and GIS methods for crime forecasting. Justice Quarterly, 28(2), 360–381. DOI: 10.1080/07418825.2010.486037 ↗
- Caplan, J. M., & Kennedy, L. W. (2016). Risk Terrain Modeling: Crime Prediction and Risk Reduction. University of California Press. ISBN: 9780520282933
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Risk Terrain Modeling of Crime Risk Factors. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/criminology/risk-terrain-modeling-criminology
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Hot Spot AnalysisSpatial analysis↔ compare
- Kernel Density Crime MappingCriminology↔ compare
- Near-Repeat AnalysisCriminology↔ compare
- Routine Activity TheoryCriminology↔ compare