DescriptionThe purpose of this study is to investigate the risk of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) employment at the national level, the subnational level, and the street level, and to investigate innovative applications of Risk Terrain Modeling for IED risk analyses across these different levels of study.
This study utilizes three separate applications of the Risk Terrain Modeling technique to determine the risk of IED emplacement at three separate analysis extents. Each level of analysis utilizes Geographic Information Systems to build composite risk maps from different types of risk factors that are associated with IED emplacement. Multivariate regression analysis is used to determine the association and significance of the risk factors as they relate to the outcome events.
Composited global level risk factors associated with permissive environments are positively associated with increased IED emplacements. Countries at highest risk of IED emplacements, as determined by the global level model, can be composited with areas of operation for terrorist groups and densely populated areas to identify microplaces for further study. Those microplaces can be assessed for risk using RTMDx.
The present study established a link between country level risk factors related to permissive environments enabled by state fragility and IED emplacements at the street level. As such, there are policy implications for strategic action to reduce state fragility and the establishment of permissive environments to curtail explosive violence. Furthermore, the identification of risky areas for IED emplacement can drive risk reduction techniques at all three levels of analysis.