Experts from the University of Binghamton in the United States have developed a mathematical model that predicts future terrorist threats. The scientists presented the results of their work at the Industrial and Systems Engineering Research conference. The press release is posted on the EurekAlert! Website.
The researchers used data from more than 140 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2014. With this information, they were able to create a tool that can calculate the relationship between threat characteristics such as attack time or weapon type.
The ability to determine where and how a new attack will occur is based on the fact that terrorist behavior is inherently predictable. Militants tend to imitate other factions and learn from their mistakes or successes. By comparing the model's predictions with available data, scientists have demonstrated that the method predicts most of the characteristics of terrorist attacks with an accuracy of 90 percent.
Terrorists, according to the authors of the article, are hostages of laws. Therefore, there is a relationship between the two attacks that the program is trying to extract. In this, the work of specialists differs from previous research, which has focused on understanding the behavior of individual terrorists or their interaction with each other on social networks.
According to scientists, their tool does not accurately predict the day and place of an impending terrorist attack, but it can help reduce risks and avoid future threats.