Modeling Social and Geopolitical Disasters as Extreme Events: A Case Study Considering the Complex Dynamics of International Armed Conflicts

Just as various sorts of extreme climatic events are identified in Earth’s atmosphere, so are some types of extreme events in our sociosphere. A geopolitical conflict that can result in a social disaster is an example. In this chapter, the turbulent-like dynamics of international armed conflicts are treated within the scope of complex multi-agent systems explicitly considering the properties of multiplicative non-homogeneous cascade where endogeny and exogeny are key points in the mathematical model of the phenomenon. As a main result, this study introduces a cellular automata prototype that allows characterizing regimes of extreme armed conflicts such as the 9∕11 terrorist attacks and the great world wars.