The Risk of Terrorist Attacks on Colombian Critical Infrastructure from a Departmental Perspective (2010-2019)

Abstract

This article arises from the need to predict terrorist attacks against Colombian critical infrastructures within the framework of the internal armed conflict. The work proposes a quantitative model that, based on categorical variables that represent the threat of groups outside the law and the threat assessment model of Biringer, Vugrin y Warren, allows determining the probability of the risk of terrorist attacks during the period 2010-2019. The different Colombian departments and their attending critical infrastructures are all included. For the purposes of this work, a database has been constructed and analyzed. The latter registers 307 terrorist attacks against the nodes of critical infrastructures and assessments of the armed groups responsible for the attacks relative to their intentionality and capacity. It has been verified that the threat adequately determines the violence based on the geographical location. However, the model is not a good predictor of risk probability, even though its correlation with the number of attacks per department is high. The article’s findings point to the need to look for other political, social or military factors that offer a better incidence for the search for a prediction model from which to intervene on the drivers of terrorist activity.