Terrorism as a disease

Through surveillance, an intelligence agency might systematically collect, analyse, interpret and disseminate related data on an ongoing basis. By knowing the ongoing pattern of the occurrence of radicalisation and potential for such developments, agencies can effectively and efficiently investigate, prevent and control terrorism in the community.

A sample of the uses of epidemiology in this instance might be:

• count terrorism or radical message-related events;
• describe the distribution of terrorism/radical message-related events in the population;
• describe clinical patterns;
• identify risk factors for developing a radical element in the community;
• identify causes or determinants of radicalisation;
• identify control and/or preventive measures;
• establish priorities for allocating resources;
• select interventions for prevention and control;
• evaluate programs; and
• conduct research - risk factors and causes; vaccine trials (means by which a community can be protected); and operational research.

To re-state the approach in a paragraph:

Messages or ideas (radical in this instance) are transmitted through a community via a combination of exposure of susceptible persons in the population at risk, dosage and environment in a similar fashion to communicable disease. We should treat the behaviour of terrorist elements as surrogates for communicable disease, and in so doing adopt epidemiological principles for monitoring, evaluation and forecasting.

An approach such as this has recently been described thus:

The infectious disease language … is sensational perhaps but does underscore the importance of epidemiologic methods in predicting and explaining the temporal and spatial distribution of disorder.

And an explanation is something we could all use.