Science Daily October 7, 2019
Researchers at Northwestern University developed an early-warning model that predicts the future lethality of a group using only a handful of events that occur soon after it emerges. Using the first 10 to 20 attacks or the first 10 to 20% of a group’s lifetime, the model provides about 60% of the explanatory power as would having a group’s complete lifetime data. They considered terror organizations like a business whose product is lethality and predict their success in producing that product based on the diversity of weapons, their sophistication and attack capabilities. Using publicly available data they calibrated the model using data from terror groups operating between the years of 1970 and 2014. Some of the most interesting model predictions were for groups that operated with very few attacks in the beginning, only becoming lethal much later. The model can predict the future impact of some of the sleeper groups even while they are still operating in an under-the-radar way…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE