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
Published inNonlinear dynamics Vol. 85; no. 3; pp. 1547 - 1560
Main Authors Lopes, António M., Machado, J. A. Tenreiro, Mata, Maria Eugénia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.08.2016
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Automotive Engineering
Classical Mechanics
Clustering
Control
Dynamical Systems
Dynamics
Engineering
Entropy
Fractal geometry
Fractals
Mathematical analysis
Mechanical Engineering
Original Paper
Regional analysis
Scaling
Terrorism
Vibration
Entropy
Fractal dimension
Terrorism
Dynamical systems
Multidimensional scaling
State space portrait
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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 support new directions for exploring terrorism data.
ISSN:0924-090X
1573-269X
DOI:10.1007/s11071-016-2778-1