Modelling insurgent attack dynamics across geographic scales and in cyberspace

Abstract

We discuss the emergence of common mathematical patterns governing the timing and severity of insurgent and terrorist attacks, across geographic scales and including cyberspace. We present mathematical models that provide a generative explanation of these patterns. Despite wide variations in the underlying settings and circumstances, the ubiquity of these patterns suggests there is a common way in which groups of humans fight each other. Our empirical findings follow from the analysis of myriad state-of-the-art datasets with resolution at the level of individual attacks, while our mathematical modelling involves numerical and analytical solutions of fission–fusion dynamics together with progress curve analysis.