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A systems model of how ethnic tensions flare into violence has passed a test in Switzerland, where harmony prevails except for one region flagged by the analysis.
The model runs census data through an assembly line of high-powered mathematical processes, but at its root is one basic assumption: that community-level violence is primarily a function of geography, modulated by the overlap of political, topographical and ethnic borders.
Though tests of the model, developed by network theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute, are still in early stages — Switzerland is the third country to be analyzed — they raise the alluring possibility that propensities to social violence can be formally quantified, predicted and even prevented.
Computational Model of Peace Predicts Social Violence, Harmony
Seeded on Wed Oct 12, 2011 6:00 AM EDT
Article Source: Wired News
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Heightened risks of violence occasioned by religious differences were smoothed out by the inclusion of borders. “Switzerland could have been Northern Ireland, except they made canton,” said Bar-Yam. For linguistic differences, heightened risks of violence persisted only in the northwest, where the Jura mountains form a porous boundary between historically French and German-speaking communities.
As predicted by the model, this is indeed a region where violence erupted in the 1970s.
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