This page will present our research on Power Laws in Armed Conflicts. This is a collaborative effort of researchers at Royal Holloway, University of Oxford, Universidad Javeriana, Universidad de los Andes and CERAC based on the databases maintained at CERAC.
In our first work we analyze the pattern of casualties in the Iraq conflict and the seemingly unrelated conflict in Colombia. Surprisingly we find that they have remarkably similar structures which also greatly resemble that of the war on global terrorism. This work has been written up in Nature, the Economist and the The Guardian
The paper was recently written-up in:
Is terrorism the next format for war? (Philip Ball), news@nature, 12 July 2005.
The mathematics of warfare, from The Economist print edition,
July 21st 2005.
This means war. (Philip Ball reports), The Guardian,
August 4, 2005.
The Mathematical Structure of Terrorism, Ben Mathiesen, 2006. PhysOrg.com
Newspaper material sometimes requires registration and/or paid subscription.
"From old wars to new wars and global terrorism", ( N. Johnson, M. Spagat, J. Restrepo, N. Suárez, J.C. Bohórquez, E.M. Restrepo and R. Zarama), July, 2005. The original working paper can be consulted here. This document also appeared with a few changes in:
- ArXiv working paper.
- Economics document, Universidad Javeriana.
- New version (PDF)
