created with NetLogo
view/download model file: TargetSelection.nlogo
The applet requires Java 1.4.1 or higher. It will not run on Windows 95 or Mac OS 8 or 9. Mac users must have OS X 10.2.6 or higher and use a browser that supports Java 1.4. (Safari works, IE does not. Mac OS X comes with Safari. Open Safari and set it as your default web browser under Safari/Preferences/General.) On other operating systems, you may obtain the latest Java plugin from Sun's Java site.
This is a terrorist target sector selection model. It is used to approximate the percentage of attacks in each major sector of a society (Private, Government, Organizations and Infrastructure) given certain values for economic and social variables.
The "terrorists" in the model probabilistically choose targets and "attack". The overall percentages can then be compared to those found in real world data.
Click the setup button. The "Go" operation is not currently needed, but it does provide some movement for the actors. The auto-attack button will continually execute attacks and allow the user to vary the sliders to see the impact of changing different values.
Created by Mike Ryckman of the University of Arizona using NetLogo 3.1.3. Data for the simulation were taken from the Terrorism Knowledge Base's Incident Reports and is available at www.tkb.org.