Related papers: Editorial
Resilience and vulnerability of societies to large-scale events such as wars, climate catastrophes, immigration waves, and institutional collapses is not well-understood. Some societies prove more resilient, while others collapse. Diversity…
A model for terrorism is presented using the theory of percolation. Terrorism power is related to the spontaneous formation of random backbones of people who are sympathetic to terrorism but without being directly involved in it. They just…
The mood at this conference is summarized in David Hughes' comment, ``this decade will be amazing.'' We've just had a pretty good ten years of advances in cosmology and extragalactic astronomy; why should we expect a repeat, another decade…
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters worldwide. Media coverage of these events may be vital to generate empathy and mobilize global populations to address the common threat posed by climate change.…
Some risks have extremely high stakes. For example, a worldwide pandemic or asteroid impact could potentially kill more than a billion people. Comfortingly, scientific calculations often put very low probabilities on the occurrence of such…
Recently developed information communication technologies, particularly the Internet, have affected how we, both as individuals and as a society, create, store, and recall information. Internet also provides us with a great opportunity to…
The deployment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) along major roadways has been a favoured strategy of insurgents in recent war zones, both for the ability to cause damage to targets along roadways at minimal cost, but also as a means…
The financial losses from extreme weather events can have a disastrous effect, often costing billions of pounds. While changes in the disposition of individual events is of importance to both the insurance and re-insurance industries, these…
Predicting future events is an important activity with applications across multiple fields and domains. For example, the capacity to foresee stock market trends, natural disasters, business developments, or political events can facilitate…
We study the statistics of human deaths from wars, conflicts, similar man-made conflicts as well as natural disasters. The probability distribution of number of people killed in natural disasters as well as man made situations show power…
This is "Letter to the Editor" of Annals of Applied Statistics, addressing the paper by Goerg G. M. (2011) "Lambert W random variables-a new family of generalized skewed distributions with applications to risk estimation".
Social media sites are becoming a key factor in politics. These platforms are easy to manipulate for the purpose of distorting information space to confuse and distract voters. Past works to identify disruptive patterns are mostly focused…
The paper explores the connection between short-range social ties (i.e. links with close relatives) and the occurrence of suicide. The objective is to discriminate between a model based on social ties and a model based on psychological…
While a social event, such as a concert or a food festival, is a common experience to people, a natural disaster is experienced by a fewer individuals. The ordinary and common ground experience of social events could be therefore used to…
Natural disasters, such as floods, tornadoes, or wildfires, are increasingly pervasive as the Earth undergoes global warming. It is difficult to predict when and where an incident will occur, so timely emergency response is critical to…
In the rapidly growing literature on explanation algorithms, it often remains unclear what precisely these algorithms are for and how they should be used. In this position paper, we argue for a novel and pragmatic perspective: Explainable…
Satellite conjunctions involving "near misses" of space objects are becoming increasingly likely. One approach to risk analysis for them involves the computation of the collision probability, but this has been regarded as having some…
The possibility that experiments at high-energy accelerators could create new forms of matter that would ultimately destroy the Earth has been considered several times in the past quarter century. One consequence of the earliest of these…
Widespread and extensive use of computers and their interconnections in almost all sectors like communications, finance, transportation, military, governance, education, energy etc., have made them attractive targets for adversaries to spy,…
Can randomness be better than scheduled practices, for securing an event at a large venue such as a stadium or entertainment arena? Perhaps surprisingly, from several perspectives the answer is "yes." This note examines findings from an…