Terrorism: Mechanisms of Radicalization Processes, Control of Contagion and Counter-Terrorist Measures

Abstract

The spread of radical ideologies is a key to fanaticism, recruitment and terrorist activities. Hence, preventing such activities requires predictive models capable of identifying areas and agents before occurrence of catastrophic terrorist act. In this paper, we develop a model that captures a radicalization mechanism through several intermediate stages of individuals. We propose a radicalizatiom mechanism using individual-based approach constructed from epidemiological model of contagion. Our model builds on insights from contagion models used in theoretical epidemiology and entails a mechanism for controlling the spread of radical ideologies on social spatial networks by identifying suspicious individuals and monitoring them, and taking action when necessary. We show how our model can combat the development of terrorist networks even with limited information on a target terrorist network.