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Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents

Author

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  • Sumitra Sri Bhashyam

    (Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom)

  • Gilberto Montibeller

    (Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom)

Abstract

With ever-increasing terror threats, governments and security officials would benefit from a better understanding of what motivates terrorists to cause social unrest. A recent research trend is on gaining greater knowledge about the values of malicious agents to help manage the risk of terrorism. As a result, there seems to be the potential to use decision analysis as a means to model what may drive malicious agents to commit harmful actions. So far, research on this topic has assumed static preferences of such agents. In this paper, we present a framework that may be used to infer how terrorists' priorities may change over time and their impact on their choice of a harmful action. We suggest modeling state-dependent priorities of a terrorist group via a multicriteria model that incorporates state-dependent priorities to account for preference change caused by exogenous triggers and representing the environment as a system dynamics model. We describe how terrorists' visceral factors may affect the prioritization of objectives and show how such an analysis may support risk management in this context.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumitra Sri Bhashyam & Gilberto Montibeller, 2012. "Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 9(2), pages 172-185, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ordeca:v:9:y:2012:i:2:p:172-185
    DOI: 10.1287/deca.1120.0237
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jason R. W. Merrick & Fabrizio Ruggeri & Refik Soyer & L. Robin Keller, 2012. "From the Editors---Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 9(2), pages 81-85, June.
    2. Jaspersen, Johannes G. & Montibeller, Gilberto, 2020. "On the learning patterns and adaptive behavior of terrorist organizations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 221-234.

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