Predicting demonstrations' violence level using qualitative reasoning

Abstract

In this paper we describe a method for modeling social behavior of large groups, and apply it to the problem of predicting potential violence during demonstrations. We use qualitative reasoning techniques which to our knowledge have never been applied to modeling crowd behaviors, nor in particular to demonstrations. Such modeling may not only contribute to the police decision making process, but can also provide a great opportunity to test existing theories in social science. We incrementally present and compare three qualitative models, based on social science theories. The results show that while two of these models fail to predict the outcomes of real-world events reported and analyzed in the literature, one model is successful. We believe that this demonstrates the efficacy of qualitative reasoning in the development and testing of social sciences theories. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.