Modeling and simulating command and control for terrorist organization

Abstract

Over time, people change with whom they interact and where they are. For instance, terrorists attempt different tasks, move to new locations, and interact with different groups. Understanding how changes in social and geospatial relations interact is critical to a number of areas, including counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and general social change. This case study introduces a simple theoretical multi-agent model for reasoning about the influence on the criticality of agents and locations as the distribution of agents in geospatial and the social interaction space coevolve. The model simulates social changes regarding with whom they interact, and spatial changes in where they relocate as functions of learning and evolutions. The analysis suggests that terrorists will disperse around the world rather than gather at a specific location. Similarly, terrorists who have been at the center of social networks will be same. This model helps us gain insights into the complexities and social organizations evolving in social and geospatial dimensions simultaneously.