Abstract:
Modelling peace support operations is a growing area of research in the defence
sector. Extensive development has been done in the area of combat models but
they are not always sufficient when modelling operations other than war.
The DIAMOND model is a large scale peace support model capable of mod-
elling entire countries. Taking an agent-based approach, we have created a model
that has the potential to be used in conjunction with DIAMOND, providing the
detail the larger model lacks. Improvements need to be made before this is pos-
sible but our model provides a strong starting point.
Self-organised criticality is an area of complexity theory that is, in part, iden-
tified by a fractal frequency-size ‘avalanche’ distributions. Previous research has
shown a link between self-organised criticality and combat modelling. We looked
for power-law behaviour in a variety of peacekeeping scenarios.
Using our agent-based model we devised a set of scenarios, each one more
complex than the previous one. Taking the conflict between the peacekeepers
and local insurgents, we used two different measures of such to represent the
‘avalanches’. The results showed no real evidence of power law relationships but
more experimentation and analysis is needed.
