An international team of scientists led by Steffen Knoblauch from the GIScience Research Group (Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany) and HeiGIT (Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany), including Dr Maciej Adamiak from HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) and the Institute of Urban Geography, Tourism Studies and Geoinformation at the Faculty of Geographical Sciences, University of Lodz, have analysed the impact of crime on access to schools in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The analyses took into account as many as 1,412 public and private educational institutions.
In their analyses, the researchers used geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI). Thanks to it, they were able to track the occurrence of crimes in detail and narrow the level of analysis to the area of individual streets. The next step was to conduct simulations, which revealed how crime may force students to change their route to school to avoid danger.
As the scientists point out, crime directly and indirectly affects the routes students take to school. It turns out that in the case of students who want to avoid danger and whose fastest routes to school run through areas with the highest crime, the route to the school is extended by almost half (48.6%). Taking a detour results in the crime risk being reduced by an average of 44.1% and can be reduced by up to almost 82%.
The research is crucial to improving spatial access to education in high-crime areas. It shows the barriers that make it difficult or impossible for students to attend educational institutions.
The scientists note that the accuracy of research depends on the number of reported offenses and crimes. They also point out that a large proportion of crimes are not reported to the appropriate services, which may underestimate the scale of the entire phenomenon.
This crime-associated inequality in geographical access to education underscores the importance of integrating crime risk into urban planning and education policy
–the experts write in their scientific article:
They also add:
The developed method is not only applicable to educational access but can also be extended to other opportunities such as employment and healthcare.
Source: Steffen Knoblauch, Ram Kumar Muthusamy, Maya Moritz, Yuhao Kang, Hao Li, Sven Lautenbach, Rafael H.M. Pereira, Filip Biljecki, Marta C. Gonzalez, Rogerio Barbosa, Daniel Veloso Hirata, Christina Ludwig, Maciej Adamiak, Antônio A. de A. Rocha, Alexander Zipf: Crime-associated inequality in geographical access to education: Insights from the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Cities, 2025, vol. 160, s.1-16, The article number:105818. DOI:10.1016/j.cities.2025.105818 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275125001180