Quantifying the future lethality of terror organizations

Abstract

We develop and test a model that predicts the future lethality of a terror group. The model significantly increases the level of explained variance over existing models and presents early-warning signal predictions. Our early-warning model predicts the future lethality of a group using only a handful of events that occur soon after it emerges. Using the first 10 to 20 attacks or the first 10 to 20% of a group’s lifetime, our early-warning model provides about 60% of the explanatory power as would having a group’s complete lifetime data, which is a basis for improved counter insurgency resources.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 07, 2019
Source ID
10.1073/pnas.1901975116

Entities

People

  • Adam R. Pah
  • Brian Uzzi
  • Yang Yang

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • Northwestern University
  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.