Computational models of emergent organisation in conflict environments

This thesis takes a multi-level computational modelling approach to develop understanding of the complex phenomena of insurgent organisation at a micro-, meso-, and macro-level. At an individual level (micro), individuals are subject to social and economic pressures that may lead to a radicalisation process in which extremist beliefs, feelings, and attitudes develop. At the societal level (macro), processes such as elections, justice and security reforms, and economic developments influence the stability of the state. In between these levels (meso), we can identify specific group-level processes that connect the attributes and skills of individuals at a communal level. In this thesis we explore the possibility of combining critical phenomena of complex systems, such as collective behaviour, feedback and self-organisation, for analysing insurgent organisation through application of different computational modelling methods. For this framework, methodologies are applied focusing on formal models to analyse the reasoning of individuals and how they perceive their environment, game theoretic and social-network models to analyse the relationships and dependencies between individuals, and agent-based and systems dynamics modelling to simulate individual and group behaviour within a certain context and analyse the development of behaviour over time. This interdisciplinary approach helped us to gain insights on how these different methodologies complement each other and enable analysis of complex phenomena specifically in the field of computational theory, conflict analysis and criminology.