An agent based approach for understanding complex terrorism behaviors

Understanding the behavior of a terrorist group is a complex phenomenon because of the uncertainty in strategies and tactics used by terrorists. Current literature suggests that terrorism has an evolutionary nature and terrorist groups change behavior according to a government's counter-terrorism policies. The goal of this research is to model how terrorist groups and government influence each other. In this regards, an agent-based modeling with network topology is used to model the system composed of interacting agents (attacks) and groups. The terrorist groups' tactics are modeled based on the success rate of attacks and the defense level of a particular location. The proposed model is validated using real-world data of suicide attacks in Iraq. The model can be used to support governmental counter-terrorism policy-making.