A Roadmap to Realistic Computational Models of Civil Wars
In Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress, eds. Shingo Takahashi, David Sallach, and Juliette Rouchier. Tokyo: Springer, 59–69.
Civil wars arguably pose the most serious problem to security in the contemporary world. Since the end of World War II, internal conflicts have become much more frequent than wars among states (Sollenberg and Wallensteen 2001). Accordingly, it does not come as a surprise that most conflict analysts have increasingly come to shift their research toward civil wars (Lake 2003). There is a vibrant, interdisciplinary literature that applies sophisticated research methods, including statistics and formal modeling, to such conflicts (Sambanis 2004). Similarly, agent‐based modelers have traditionally analyzed interstate warfare, but they have been slower to embrace civil wars as their research focus. This paper reports on our own efforts to build more accurate computational models of civil wars, and sketches a computational research program for this purpose. We propose solutions to the conceptual and methodological obstacles that stand in the way of progress. In particular, we suggest ways to integrate data generated in geographic information systems (GIS) with agent‐based models.
DOI:
10.1007/978-4-431-73167-2_7Girardin, Luc, and Lars-Erik Cederman. 2007. “A Roadmap to Realistic Computational Models of Civil Wars.” In Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress, eds. Shingo Takahashi, David Sallach, and Juliette Rouchier. Tokyo: Springer, 59–69.
@inbook{a-roadmap-to-realistic-computational-models-of-civil-wars,
Title = {A Roadmap to Realistic Computational Models of Civil Wars},
Author = {Girardin, Luc and Cederman, Lars-Erik},
Booktitle = {Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress},
Year = {2007},
Pages = {59--69},
Address = {Tokyo},
Editor = {Takahashi, Shingo and Sallach, David and Rouchier, Juliette},
Publisher = {Springer},
abstract = {Civil wars arguably pose the most serious problem to security in the contemporary world. Since the end of World War II, internal conflicts have become much more frequent than wars among states (Sollenberg and Wallensteen 2001). Accordingly, it does not come as a surprise that most conflict analysts have increasingly come to shift their research toward civil wars (Lake 2003). There is a vibrant, interdisciplinary literature that applies sophisticated research methods, including statistics and formal modeling, to such conflicts (Sambanis 2004). Similarly, agent-based modelers have traditionally analyzed interstate warfare, but they have been slower to embrace civil wars as their research focus. This paper reports on our own efforts to build more accurate computational models of civil wars, and sketches a computational research program for this purpose. We propose solutions to the conceptual and methodological obstacles that stand in the way of progress. In particular, we suggest ways to integrate data generated in geographic information systems (GIS) with agent-based models.},
doi = {10.1007/978-4-431-73167-2_7},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-73167-2_7},
pdf = {http://www.icr.ethz.ch/publications/cederman2006roadmap.pdf}
}