Understanding Urban Conflict Tipping Points

Accompanying the rapid urbanization of human populations across the globe, highly complex megacities are emerging as one of the 21st century's greatest challenges. To grapple with the immense complexity inherent to dynamic metropolises, useful frameworks have emerged to better evaluate and understand the vulnerabilities of urban stability. In particular, the GENETICS/ACE model, developed by students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2020, provided a framework with which to understand urban stability.

This project, in cooperation with West Point’s Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, seeks to adapt the existing GENETICS/ACE framework, which focuses on categories of Governance, Economics, Natural Environment, Energy, Technology, Infrastructure, Culture, and Security, into a quantitative model that can explain stability “tipping points''. Through the development of the model, the Capstone team broke down some of the complexity in cities into an understandable system. This was done by providing a framework, or sub-model, through which to study changes in stability within each of the GENETICS variables. In taking steps to operationalize the GENETICS/ACE framework, the team developed the capacity to identify trends or patterns in urban stability, as well as pinpoint the triggers or factors that are contributing to the permanence or shift in the current state of the city.