Assignment:
This week's electronic reading from Schmidt, Goffeney and Willis highlight that intelligence analysts and military planners need to accurately use forecasting techniques for predicting future terror events. The article points out that threat analysis forecasts must consider historical events, up-to-date geospatial features, terrorist behavior, and uncertainty and error in the input measurements and propagation of data.
From the 9/11 attacks, to those committed at the Boston Marathon the connection between predictive threat analysis and terrorist behaviors continues to be studied.
For this discussion consider how terrorists behave and what actions might be useful in predictive analysis. Dr Robert Pape from the University of Chicago has explored the behavior of suicide bombers in countless articles and books (Watch a port of Dr Pape's presentation on the subject (CC), and watch a portion of Dr Pape's discussion on the subject with Sam Harris (CC). AMU's Dr Brent Smith, in his article entitled "A Look at Terrorist Behavior: Where They Strike," looks at the same issue with a different spin.