Modelling Rural Police Patrol

Police patrol has been modelled extensively in the urban environment, but these urban models cannot usually be applied to rural settings. The length of travel times and the nature of calls for service in rural, wide-area, low-population regions demand special consideration. In this paper, we develop a Markov model that explicitly incorporates travel times and priority calls to analyse police patrol policies in rural areas. Results of the model using data from Washtenaw County, Michigan, USA, are given to show its utility.