Space time dynamics of insurgent activity in Iraq

Abstract

This paper describes analyses to determine whether there is a space-time dependency for insurgent activity. The data used for the research were 3 months of terrorist incidents attributed to the insurgency in Iraq during U.S. occupation and the methods used are based on a body of work well established using police recorded crime data. It was found that events clustered in space and time more than would be expected if the events were unrelated, suggesting communication of risk in space and time and potentially informing next event prediction. The analysis represents a first but important step and suggestions for further analysis addressing prevention or suppression of future incidents are briefly discussed.