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Chaos Theory
Terrorists do not strike at random, and now a computer programme can calculate the risk of an attack on behalf of the business sector with a particular vested interest in the issue: insurers.“We don’t agree with their ends, but they are not madmen. They have a logic, we can understand it,” said Andrew Coburn, director of the terrorism department of Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a risk modeling agency specializing in disasters, after a meeting of major European insurers and reinsurers.
Coburn and his 40-member team at RMS map the logic of terrorist attacks, converting statistical, historical, military, geographical and industrial data and advice from defense experts into trends, graphs and ratios. The result is a computer programme, now in its fourth edition, that gives subscribers an estimate of the risk of having to provide insurance cover for a terrorist attack in 228 countries.
In the case of the cities most at risk of being targeted, it can give an estimate based on individual streets or buildings. Clients enter into the software the coordinates of the buildings they insure for terrorism.
“We run the analysis and tell them: if you have a bomb of, say, two tonnes in this location, the cost to you would be 10 million dollars,” Coburn said. “We use statistical patterns of risk. We look at the intentions of the terrorists: they tell us a lot about their intentions, we have to listen. They publish, they tell us their reasons” he added. “We know what they are trying to achieve.”The system aims to give insurers data for setting the prices they charge clients and also to alert them if they pass a certain threshold of risk of a terrorist incident in places particularly prone to attacks. According to RMS, the six top European “hot spots”, representing the risk of maximum pay-outs following a terrorist attack, are all in central London.
After these, the seventh highest on the list is the second arrondissement, or borough, of central Paris. Worldwide, Manhattan ranks among the most high-risk places, containing five of the locations most prone to attacks. RMS estimates there is a 3.5 in 100 chance of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack somewhere in the next 12 months.
I used to explain a lot of this to a few insurance underwriter pals and they couldn’t understand some of the patterns or ideology of the people in the places they had underwritten.
I agree that computers will probably help you to look out for patterns, true, but I doubt if they spot underlying trends such as poverty, inequality, weapons flows, money transfers etc that take a lot of investigation to track.Perhaps RMS has overlooked one thing..
Computers are predictable..human behaviour is not typically predictable.
especially when it comes to oh so very rational mind of a suicide bomber.Let me guess..”RMS predicts that a suicide bomber will cause X number of deaths whilst blowing himself up somewhere in Gaza,some time in the future..”..
There is a whole thing about Game Theory that tries to predict this as well. Scowcroft is a big fan of it but the problem is that using it in certain politcal climates will often invite accusation of “sympathising” with the terrorists by trying to think like them…I would imagine that these thinkers have found a haven in the Insurance Business and it would be worthwhile to listen to what they have to say.
@lightstalker wrote:
yeah sure..theoretically of course.
what i should have said was; Humans are predicatble just as thet are unpredictable..
RMS can predict when terrorits will strike and where?…
yeah……..and Pythagoras once believed that everyhing in the universe revolved around a mathematical equation..
nope, the computer program isnt designed to prognosticate, just as auto insurance predictor programs dont go all nostrodamus to predict which particular drivers will crash at particular times. it just calculates general trends based on large amounts of input info that would take significantly longer to calculate by hand. same way insurers alter prices based on the area you drive in, insurers will change prices based on what area you operate in. makes sense to me.
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