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Terrorist Population Dynamics Model
Author(s) -
Kaminskiy Mark P.,
Ayyub Bilal M.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00780.x
Subject(s) - terrorism , population , constant (computer programming) , current (fluid) , computer security , computer science , risk analysis (engineering) , operations research , political science , engineering , sociology , business , demography , law , electrical engineering , programming language
A system that includes a number of terrorist cells is considered. The cells can consist of one or more terrorists. The current number of terrorist cells is further denoted by N ( t ), where t is a current time counted from any appropriate origin. The objective is to find the evolution of the system in terms of N ( t ) and some interpretable parameters, such as the initial number of the terrorist cells N 0 = N (0), the cell disabling rate constant λ (or the cell half‐life t 1/2 ), and the rate of formation of new cells P. The cost‐effectiveness analysis, performed in the framework of the model, reveals that the effectiveness of disabling a terrorist cell is getting worse after 2–3 half‐lives of a cell, which shows that if the anti‐terrorist actions have not reached their goal during that time, the respective policy should be considered for revision, using the risk assessment consideration. Another important issue raised concerns balancing the efforts related to counterterrorism actions inside the system and the efforts protecting its borders. The respective data analysis is suggested and illustrated using simulated data.