Miguel Garces, Thomas McCauley, Ian Lustick

This document is meant to be a primer on Lustick Consulting’s model of Syria & Iraq (we call it “Syraq” for short). It is a spatio-temporal network model of both countries, designed to help explain and forecast political instability. This document will not be an introduction to how our model works, what kinds of past validation we’ve done, or the broader goals of the project under which this model has been funded. Instead, it will be about the Syraq model specifically, and how it can and cannot help us make sense of how that complex system operates. Also included is a brief report on general patterns appearing in our output data.

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UPDATE: Syraq Validation Report