CrossRef Open Access 2026

Multi‐Agent Reinforcement Learning for Joint Police Patrol and Dispatch

Matthew Repasky He Wang Yao Xie

Abstrak

ABSTRACT Police patrol units need to split their time between performing preventive patrol and being dispatched to serve emergency incidents. In the existing literature, patrol and dispatch decisions are often studied separately. We consider joint optimization of these two decisions to improve police operations efficiency and reduce response time to emergency calls. We propose a novel method for jointly optimizing multi‐agent patrol and dispatch to learn policies yielding rapid response times. Our method treats each patroller as an independent ‐learner (agent) with a shared deep ‐network that represents the state‐action values. The dispatching decisions are chosen using mixed‐integer programming and value function approximation from combinatorial action spaces. We demonstrate that this heterogeneous multi‐agent reinforcement learning approach is capable of learning joint policies that outperform those optimized for patrol or dispatch alone. Policies jointly optimized for patrol and dispatch can lead to more effective service while targeting demonstrably flexible objectives, such as those encouraging efficiency and equity in response.

Penulis (3)

M

Matthew Repasky

H

He Wang

Y

Yao Xie

Format Sitasi

Repasky, M., Wang, H., Xie, Y. (2026). Multi‐Agent Reinforcement Learning for Joint Police Patrol and Dispatch. https://doi.org/10.1002/nav.70059

Akses Cepat

Lihat di Sumber doi.org/10.1002/nav.70059
Informasi Jurnal
Tahun Terbit
2026
Bahasa
en
Sumber Database
CrossRef
DOI
10.1002/nav.70059
Akses
Open Access ✓