Modeling Terrorist Group Behavior: Hamas & Hezbollah
By Aaron Mannes
In my day job at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics I work with a team of computer scientists and socials scientists to build models of terrorist group behavior. As the in-house TerrorWonk my role is to “interpret” the results and see if they yield any useful insights. I’ve co-authored papers on both Hezbollah and Hamas ( only the abstract is posted online).
The models use a system called SOMA (Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents) that calculates probabilities of a group acting in a given way in a given situation.
Obviously, we hope that our models can achieve a high level of prediction accuracy. But, regardless they can often reveal facets of an organization’s behavior that were not previously evident. Just as military experts say, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything,” I heard one speaker at a conference say, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
Following are short summaries of the findings.
Read the full post here.
