Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems
by Paul K. Davis, Angela O'Mahony, Jonathan Pfautz
2 Improving Social‐Behavioral Modeling
Paul K. Davis and Angela O'Mahony
RAND Corporation and Pardee RAND Graduate School, Santa Monica, CA, 90401, USA
Aspirations
Social‐behavioral modeling (SBM) has many valuable functions, but an aspiration should be that such modeling help policy‐makers understand classes of social‐behavioral (SB) phenomena with national significance, anticipate how those phenomena may unfold, and estimate effects of potential events or government interventions. It should inform policy‐making on such security and social‐policy issues as radicalization for terrorism, weakening of democracy by foreign influence campaigns, improving prospects for stability after international interventions, managing population behaviors after natural disasters, and dealing with the opioid crisis and epidemics. Today's SBM is contributing far less to the study of such matters than it could. Major advances are needed, but in what? We offer suggestions distilled from a longer study (Davis et al. 2018).
Before proceeding, it may be useful to give two examples of what may in the future be possible.
Vignette 1
Today (March 1, 2035), the US government released its report on homegrown terrorism with good news: the number of youths seeking to join violent extremist groups such as the descendants of ISIS and Al‐Qaeda has dropped precipitously. This is apparently due to programs helping to inoculate impressionable youth against the attractions and propaganda of such organizations. ...