Mathematical terrorism
by Gutfraind, Alexander, Ph.D., CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 2010, 148 pages; 3396205

Abstract:

Mathematical research of terrorism has the potential to inform both scholars and policymakers. This thesis presents several projects in this emerging area: (1) an ordinary-differential equations model of a terrorist organization focused on evaluating various counter-terrorism measures and predicting the evolution of terrorist conflicts; (2) a model of nuclear smuggling where the adversary is described as a Markov process on a transportation network and algorithms for positioning sensor arrays on the network; (3) a new formulation of nuclear smuggling that allows fast computation using approximation algorithms with performance guarantees; (4) a model for constructing cascade-resilient networks, with implications for analyzing the structure of terrorist networks, specifically their susceptibility to betrayal.

 
AdviserRichard Timothy Durrett
SchoolCORNELL UNIVERSITY
SourceDAI/B 71-03, p. , Mar 2010
Source TypeDissertation
SubjectsApplied mathematics; Political Science
Publication Number3396205
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