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Abstract We study a reaction–advection–diffusion model of a target–offender–guardian system designed to capture interactions between urban crime and policing. Using Crandall–Rabinowitz bifurcation theory and spectral analysis, we establish rigorous conditions for both steady-state and Hopf bifurcations. These results identify critical thresholds of policing intensity at which spatially uniform equilibria lose stability, leading either to persistent heterogeneous hotspots or oscillatory crime–policing cycles. From a criminological perspective, such thresholds represent tipping points in guardian mobility: once crossed, they can lock neighbourhoods into stable clusters of criminal activity or trigger recurrent waves of hotspot formation. Numerical simulations complement the theory, exhibiting stationary patterns, periodic oscillations and chaotic dynamics. By explicitly incorporating law enforcement as a third interacting component, our framework extends classical two-equation models. It offers new tools for analysing non-linear interactions, bifurcations and pattern formation in multi-agent social systems.
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On pattern formation in the thermodynamically-consistent variational Gray-Scott model
In this paper, we explore pattern formation in a four-species variational Gary-Scott model, which includes all reverse reactions and introduces a virtual species to describe the birth–death process in the classical Gray-Scott model. This modification transforms the classical Gray-Scott model into a thermodynamically consistent closed system. The classical two-species Gray-Scott model can be viewed as a subsystem of the variational model in the limiting case when the small parameter ε, related to the reaction rate of the reverse reactions, approaches zero. We numerically explore pattern formation in this physically more complete Gray-Scott model in one spatial dimension, using non-uniform steady states of the classical model as initial conditions. By decreasing ε, we observed that the stationary patterns in the classical Gray-Scott model can be stabilized as the transient states in the variational model for a significantly small ε. Additionally, the variational model admits oscillating and traveling wave-like patterns for small ε. The persistent time of these patterns is on the order of O(1/ε). We also analyze the energy stability of two uniform steady states in the variational Gary-Scott model for fixed. Although both states are stable in a certain sense, the gradient flow type dynamics of the variational model exhibit a selection effect based on the initial conditions, with pattern formation occurring only if the initial condition does not converge to the boundary steady state, which corresponds to the trivial uniform steady state in the classical Gray-Scott model.
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- PAR ID:
- 10607908
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Mathematical Biosciences
- Volume:
- 385
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0025-5564
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 109453
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mbs.2025.109453
