Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

MODELING POPULATION DYNAMICS FOR HOMELAND SECURITY APPLICATIONS

MARK P. KAMINSKIY AND BILAL M. AYYUB

Center for Technology and Systems Management, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

1 INTRODUCTION

Analysis of the risks related to combating terrorism problems is a multidisciplinary subject. It includes practically all the methods of probabilistic risk analysis such as scenario development, event-tree analysis, and precursor analysis. It is worth mentioning that the analysis of real data related to counterterrorist actions is definitely not on this list, which is true for the so-called simulation models [1, 2] as well. The simulation models can add some insights on terrorist population dynamics (TPD), but in contrast to the models considered below, no “quantitative conclusions can be made from the simulation results” [2]. Thus, developing the data analysis methodology related to counterterrorist actions constitutes an important part of the respective methodological tools needed.

International terrorism today is very different compared to what we dealt with in the 1970s and 1980s [3, 4]. The scale of this phenomenon is much larger, so we can apply the notion of population to this international community of terrorists to timely investigate its dynamics. The TPD models introduced below are similar (but not identical) to some survival data analysis models, which are, in turn, borrowed from nuclear physics and chemical kinetics ...