Extended Abstract
Introduction
Terrorist attacks, which are one of the most dangerous security challenges in the contemporary world, have painful effects on society and social, political, and economic structures. Over the past two decades, terrorist attacks with religious and political motives have been increasing (Budo et al., 2019; Koehler, 2016). This phenomenon has spread a sense of insecurity and anxiety among different countries and societies; therefore, analyzing the vulnerability caused by these attacks seems necessary. The scientific study of terrorism and counterterrorism has witnessed explosive growth today, with a large number of studies addressing the threat of terrorism and examining how to mitigate such threats (Bakshi & Pinkler, 2018; Dessler, 2002), predict (Campedella et al., 2021; Dessler, 2002; Python et al., 2021), and describe (Jaspersen & Montibler, 2020). Although counterterrorism efforts have led to improved technologies, more resilient targets, and increased security personnel, terrorists continue to seek to identify vulnerabilities in existing systems and infrastructure, a fact that reflects the adaptive nature of terrorists, which has motivated much work using game theory to study strategic interactions between defenders and adversaries (Hunt & Zhang, 2024).
Although this breadth of research history demonstrates a highly advanced understanding of how and why terrorism occurs, there are key gaps in the place and time of emergence of the terrorism threat; therefore, the important issue of the present research is to what extent each urban use is attractive to terrorist attacks. Ranking and assessing the attractiveness of each use plays a significant role in identifying vulnerabilities and calculating the resilience of cities against terrorist threats; because in terrorist threats, especially bombing operations, in addition to the attacked use itself, adjacent uses within the explosion radius are also affected, and in practice, it increases vulnerability and reduces resilience in this area and can be a very influential indicator.Considering the above issues, this article seeks to answer the following questions:
What indicators are effective in determining the target points of terrorist attacks?
hat incentives and barriers exist in the path of planning and carrying out terrorist attacks in urban environments?
What scenarios can be implemented to reduce the impact of terrorist attacks in urban environments?
How practical are scenarios in reducing threats?
Research Methodology
The present study is classified as applied-developmental research in terms of research type and descriptive-analytical research in terms of research nature. The research method employed in this study is a descriptive-analytical approach. First, using library and internet resources, the history of terrorist attacks was examined, along with their impact on various urban uses. Next, the effective indicators for evaluating the attractiveness of urban uses in the context of terrorist attacks were identified. Then, the types of uses and micro-uses were extracted from different sources. By designing a questionnaire, the scores for each indicator were obtained based on the opinions of experts. Then, using the RANCOM multi-criteria decision-making method, the weight and importance of each indicator were obtained. Finally, using the PIV decision-making method, the attractiveness of each micro-use was ranked.
Result and discussion
Calculating the weight of indicators for evaluating the attractiveness of urban uses against terrorist attacks
The RANCOM decision-making method was employed to determine the weights of the indicators. In this regard, the results obtained from the questionnaires were first analyzed using SPSS software. Then, the priority of the weights was determined, which is the first stage of the RANCOM method, and a pairwise comparison matrix was subsequently formed. The collective weight of the criteria was then calculated, and finally, the final weight of each indicator was obtained.
According to the elite community of this research, the damage and casualties index has the highest weight, because, based on the behavior of terrorists, they try to attack applications that cause the most damage and casualties in order to create more fear and panic in society. The threat history index is ranked second and weighs 0.267. The population density index is ranked next, with a weight of 0.2, and finally, the two indicators of secondary damage and continuity of essential services are ranked.
Calculating the rank and weight of micro-user attractiveness using the PIV method
In this stage of the research, the nature of the criteria was first determined. Then, using the results obtained from the analysis of the questionnaires in SPSS software with a reliability of 96%, a decision-making matrix was formed based on the PIV method, which included five indicators and 65 micro-users. Next, the matrix was normalized, and using the results of the RANCOM decision-making method, in which the weights of each indicator were obtained, the weighting of the normalized decision-making matrix was performed. Then, the distance criterion and the collective value of the distance were calculated. Finally, the weight and rank of each micro-user were determined, and the results are presented in Table 6.
Conclusion
Based on the results obtained from the urban commercial centers of the market, wholesale is ranked first in terms of attractiveness to users for terrorist attacks, the main reason being the large population during this holiday. In addition to commercial shops, this center now includes many other areas such as cinemas, game centers, etc., which, if carried out by a terrorist attack, would cause a lot of human casualties and create much panic in the city. In second place, the micro-utilization of airports with a score of 0.158 are ranked second due to population density and the importance of their services, followed by military command centers in third place, oil and gas infrastructure in fourth, border control centers in fifth, and port facilities in sixth. Religious sites, hospitals, military and law enforcement headquarters, and courts and prosecutors’ offices are ranked in the subsequent positions. These findings are consistent with the data from the GTD database in 2024.