An Agent-Based Simulation of the Socio-Economic Factors of Terrorism in the Middle-East


    Understanding the complex social, economic, religious, and political interdependencies of the Middle-East is important to international policy makers - especially for determining the motivating factors of international terrorism.   In order to achieve an overall systems view of Middle-Eastern terrorism we have constructed an agent-based model of known terrorist organizations in that region.  This model calculates a dynamic social grievance metric which is a function of relative agent social status, ethnicity, affinity towards specific regimes, and cultural penetration in the agent's local region.  The model is populated with socio-economic distributions of sub-national, regional data using a GIS system.  Known terrorist organizations in this region are also input into the model using current intelligence of social networks, resources, goals, and areas of activity.  The goal of the model is to make quantifiable estimates of how exogenous shocks (sanctions, economic aid, withdraw of cultural penetration, etc.) will affect the social grievance levels and motivations of various terrorist groups.  We will present our model architecture, social algorithms, initial results, and discuss some of our challenges.


Edward P. MacKerrow, Zoltan Toroczkai, Merle Lefkoff, David Sharp
Los Alamos National Laboratory
T-13
Complex Systems Group
Theoretical Division


Systems Modeling of Government-Funded Research Laboratories


    We are leading an effort at Los Alamos National Lab to model the complex internal organization
in an effort to help identify where managers and analysts can change and modify to help
the organization run efficiently. The scope, challenges and help that might be needed will be
conveyed at the conference. This case can be used as an example for a federal-funded organization
with no profit bottom lines and lots of regulations and oversights.


Shao-Ping Chen
Los Alamos National Laboratory
T-DO, MS-B210
sc@lanl.gov

Ed Mackerrow
Los Alamos National Laboratory
T-13
mackerrow@lanl.gov