Analysis of global terrorism dynamics by means of entropy and state space portrait

This paper studies the global terrorism dynamics over the period 1970–2014. Data about terrorist events are analyzed by means of several mathematical tools, namely fractal dimension, entropy, state space portrait and multidimensional scaling, that reflect the dynamics in time and space. In a first p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lopes, António M. (author)
Other Authors: Machado, J.A.Tenreiro (author), Mata, Maria Eugénia (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/9416
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:recipp.ipp.pt:10400.22/9416
Description
Summary:This paper studies the global terrorism dynamics over the period 1970–2014. Data about terrorist events are analyzed by means of several mathematical tools, namely fractal dimension, entropy, state space portrait and multidimensional scaling, that reflect the dynamics in time and space. In a first phase, we consider worldwide events and we unveil the space–time characteristics exhibited by the global terrorism statistics. In a second phase, we group the events into eight geographic regions, and we analyze terrorism dynamics in a regional perspective. Finally, in a third phase, we adopt a complementary analysis of global terrorism based on multidimensional scaling and clustering techniques. The proposed methodology reveals to