  Violence against women occurs predominantly in the family and domestic
context. The COVID-19 pandemic led Brazil to recommend and, at times, impose
social distancing, with the partial closure of economic activities, schools,
and restrictions on events and public services. Preliminary evidence shows that
intense coexistence increases domestic violence, while social distancing
measures may have prevented access to public services and networks,
information, and help. We propose an agent-based model (ABM), called VIDA, to
illustrate and examine multi-causal factors that influence events that generate
violence. A central part of the model is the multi-causal stress indicator,
created as a probability trigger of domestic violence occurring within the
family environment. Two experimental design tests were performed: (a) absence
or presence of the deterrence system of domestic violence against women and (b)
measures to increase social distancing. VIDA presents comparative results for
metropolitan regions and neighbourhoods considered in the experiments. Results
suggest that social distancing measures, particularly those encouraging staying
at home, may have increased domestic violence against women by about 10%. VIDA
suggests further that more populated areas have comparatively fewer cases per
hundred thousand women than less populous capitals or rural areas of urban
concentrations. This paper contributes to the literature by formalising, to the
best of our knowledge, the first model of domestic violence through agent-based
modelling, using empirical detailed socioeconomic, demographic, educational,
gender, and race data at the intraurban level (census sectors).
