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The effect of crowd density on the expected number of casualties in a suicide attack
Author(s) -
Kress Moshe
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
naval research logistics (nrl)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1520-6750
pISSN - 0894-069X
DOI - 10.1002/nav.20049
Subject(s) - computer science , operations research , statistics , mathematics
Utilizing elementary geometric and probability considerations, we estimate the effect of crowd blocking in suicide bombing events. It is shown that the effect is quite significant. Beyond a certain threshold, the expected number of casualties decreases with the number of people in the arena. The numerical results of our model are consistent with casualty data from suicide bombing events in Israel. Some operational insights are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.