Terrorism Dynamics

Contributed by Bruce Skarin

Introduction

This model is the product of my Major Qualifying Project (MQP) for my Bachelors degree in the field of system dynamics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. There were two goals to this project:

1) To develop a model that reasonably simulates the historic attacks by the al-Qaida terrorist network against the United States.

2) To evaluate the usefulness of the model for developing public understanding of the terrorism problem.

The full model and report are available on my website.

Reference Mode

The reference mode for this model was the escalation of attacks linked to al-Qaida against the U.S., as shown below. The data for this chart is available through this Google Document.
Image:Terrorism_Reference_Mode.jpg

Causal View of the Model

Below is the causal diagram of the primary feedback loops in the model.

Image:Terrorism_Causal_Loop.png

Online Story Model

There is an online story version that explains the primary model structure as well as complete iThink and Vensim models on my MQP page.

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