Microsimulation & Risk Modelling Group

Terrorism

Our forays into the modelling of terrorist attacks led to the development of our current prototype terrorism module: TPC; this stands for: Terrorist, Police, Citizen and refers to its functionality.

The module divides the population into three distinct groups:

Terrorist

Terrorists are individuals who are attempting to evade detection long enough to attack the rest of the populace by self-detonation.

Police

These represent law enforcement officers whose task is to patrol the community, attempting to intercept and stop terrorists.

Citizen

From a purely functional standpoint, citizens exist to keep score.

The interplay between police and terrorists is represented by a dice-roll at each tick to determine whether or not a given police officer will detect a given terrorist within the same cell. Each terrorist has a "camouflage factor" which reduces this chance, whilst each police officer has a "perceptiveness factor" which increases it.

Terrorists also have a specific chance to prematurely detonate if they are caught as well as a target time at which they intend to attack.

This has been tested in a case study of police interdiction of a terrorist attack.