Modeling State-Dependent Priorities of Malicious Agents

• Published in: Decision analysis 2012-06, Vol.9 (2), p.172-185
• Main Authors: Bhashyam, Sumitra Sri, Montibeller, Gilberto
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Decision analysis; Decision making; Game theory; multiattribute utility theory; Objectives; Preferences; state-dependent priorities; Studies; Terrorism; terrorist threats; Terrorists; value models; Violence
• ISSN: 1545-8490; 1545-8504
• DOI: 10.1287/deca.1120.0237

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.