Mass violence is empirically rare. Studying mass violence presents numerous meth-odological chall... more Mass violence is empirically rare. Studying mass violence presents numerous meth-odological challenges. The complex nature of mass violence events, which may have germinated in years prior, make attempts to use conventional research methods problematic. Complexity science and the interdisciplinary field of computational social science offer new scientific paradigms and computational tools well suited to the study of complex and dynamic phenomena like mass violence. We review aspects of mass violence that can hamper research efforts, introduce complexity science, computational social science and computational modeling, and highlight three types of computational models that will likely be of particular interest and value to the threat assessment and management community. Public Significance Statement This theoretical review article discusses methodological challenges for mass violence research and proposes computational modeling and simulation as a valuable tool for use by threat assessment and management researchers and professionals. We discuss basic principles of complexity science, modeling, and simulation, and suggest three types of computational models-spatial/tactical, population, and organizational-of particular appeal for threat assessment and management. We conclude by presenting an example spatial/tactical agent-based model used to conduct computational research on the possibility of unarmed resistance in an active shooter scenario.
Mass violence is empirically rare. Studying mass violence presents numerous meth-odological chall... more Mass violence is empirically rare. Studying mass violence presents numerous meth-odological challenges. The complex nature of mass violence events, which may have germinated in years prior, make attempts to use conventional research methods problematic. Complexity science and the interdisciplinary field of computational social science offer new scientific paradigms and computational tools well suited to the study of complex and dynamic phenomena like mass violence. We review aspects of mass violence that can hamper research efforts, introduce complexity science, computational social science and computational modeling, and highlight three types of computational models that will likely be of particular interest and value to the threat assessment and management community. Public Significance Statement This theoretical review article discusses methodological challenges for mass violence research and proposes computational modeling and simulation as a valuable tool for use by threat assessment and management researchers and professionals. We discuss basic principles of complexity science, modeling, and simulation, and suggest three types of computational models-spatial/tactical, population, and organizational-of particular appeal for threat assessment and management. We conclude by presenting an example spatial/tactical agent-based model used to conduct computational research on the possibility of unarmed resistance in an active shooter scenario.
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Papers by Jeffrey Pollard