Forecasting Terrorism

The author identifies 68 indicators of terrorist activity and analyses each with a step-by-step explanation. He also outlines safeguards against 38 of the 42 common warning pitfalls. By following Khalsa's methodology, analysts can recognize and assess terrorist activity and thus provide warnings that will help prevent attacks.

Accompanying CD-ROM includes a web-based interface and "a 45-minute video that provides an executive summary of the forecasting methodology"--P. 1.

This book identifies the central problems of crisis research, assesses the progress of work in the area, and discusses prospects for the future. It addresses Soviet, Chinese, and U.S. crisis management patterns, computer-based early warning systems, terrorism, and the Rapid Deployment Force.

Evaluates the macroeconomic impacts of the 9/11 attack on U.S. real GDP growth and the unemployment rate by examining how forecasts of these variables were revised after the attack occurred. By this approach, the immediate impact of the 9/11 attack was to reduce real GDP growth in 2001 by 0.5%, and to increase the unemployment rate by 0.11% (reduce employment by 598,000 jobs). Forecasted real GDP growth in 2002 fell dramatically immediately after the 9/11 attack but then recovered fully. The forecasted unemployment rate in 2002 rose sharply immediately after the 9/11 attack, but unlike real GDP growth, it never subsequently returned to a pre-9/11 level. Illustrations. This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication.

"The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) set out to develop ways to predict what determines the targets of suicide attacks. While the ultimate goal is to create a list of areas at risk for the U.S. environment, the first phase of development employed a data set from Israel. Initially, NRL focused on spatial attributes, creating its own risk index, but realized that this focus on the where ignored the broader social context, the why. The lab asked RAND to test, as a proof of principle, the ability of sociocultural, political, economic, and demographic factors to enhance the predictive ability of NRL's methodology. Again using Israel as a sample, RAND created a database that coded for these factors, then conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses with an eye to determining what puts a given area at greater risk. The quantitative analysis established that these factors are related to the odds of attack within specific neighborhoods and that the relationships held even when controlling for geospatial factors, so they seem to confer risk for reasons beyond their association with geospatial features of neighborhoods. The specifics of the research are limited to the preferences of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel; however, the methods used to assess target preferences in Israel could be transferred to the United States or other countries. Any results, if proven to be robust, could be used to develop recommendations for heightened public awareness in certain areas."--Page 4 of cover.

Terrorist groups throughout the world have been studied primarily through the use of social science methods. However, major advances in IT during the past decade have led to significant new ways of studying terrorist groups, making forecasts, learning models of their behaviour, and shaping policies about their behaviour. Handbook of Computational Approaches to Counterterrorism provides the first in-depth look at how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology is shaping the study of terrorist groups. This book includes contributions from world experts in the field, and presents extensive information on terrorism data sets, new ways of building such data sets in real-time using text analytics, introduces the mathematics and computational approaches to understand terror group behaviour, analyzes terror networks, forecasts terror group behaviour, and shapes policies against terrorist groups. Auxiliary information will be posted on the book’s website. This book targets defence analysts, counter terror analysts, computer scientists, mathematicians, political scientists, psychologists, and researchers from the wide variety of fields engaged in counter-terrorism research. Advanced-level students in computer science, mathematics and social sciences will also find this book useful.