detonated either by remote control or by a suicide driver on board. The type of vehicle used determines largely the number of casualties resulting from **the detonation**
(typically several dozen).

3. Economic damage potential: **A city where an attack may result in high economic**
damage becomes a good choice for terrorists involved in a relatively protracted war against established government.

4. Maximize print and electronic media coverage: **A city with thorough and**
prompt media coverage is yet another attraction for terror groups. Cities with a lot of movement of high profile personalities is particularly prone to such **attacks.**
5. **Vicinity of the areas having religious fanaticism, supremacist ideology**
and/or pronounced anti-government ideology: **A city with geographical and** cultural proximity to areas of extremist ideologies is an easy target. Geographical proximity provides easy access to urban center and cultural proximity provides much need camouflage for the suicide attacker.

6. Day of week: **Day of week has been observed to be of special importance. For**
example a day of religious gathering of another sect immediately draws the attention of terrorists. Equivalently, in certain countries people of highest military and civil establishment gather for weekly religious services and thus become **a very attractive** target for suicide bombers.

7. Post attack hiding: **A city which either due to its high population density or due**
to its urban planning provides easy hiding places or escape routes is another factor contributing towards the choice of suicide attacker and his accomplices.

8. Safe heaven: **City with access to a relatively closer safe heaven where development**
efforts can take place unhindered is very high on terrorist's priority **list.**
9. Physical difficulty: **It pertains to different physical obstacles presented to the**
attacker e.g. security pickets, checkposts, body search spots **etc.**
10. Psychological impact: **A city or location generally viewed as the fortress of top**
leadership and/or establishment (civil/military) carries a very high potential for psychological impact in case of attack. For example such an impact will be very high for capital of a country.

It is important to realize that each of the above mentioned factors **is a fuzzy set over**
the universal set of cities, where membership grade of each city may be decided either quantitatively as in case of population density for factor 1 and/or 7 **or by expert's opinion**
as in factors 4 and 10. Some of the factors may seem overlapping e.g. 5 and 6, **but as the**
prediction attempt suffers from vagueness of linguistic terms and incomplete knowledge both, such an overlap is in fact helpful for passing a judgement based upon plausible reasoning. Moreover factor 5 is a relatively qualitative measure but **6 is quantitatively**
measurable. Thus each complements the other. A similar argument is **extended for the** other resembling factors.

Because such a decision making is generally carried out collectively e.g. **by a committee**
of counter-terror officials, it is very much possible that either a certain factor remains undecided or no information could be gathered for it at all. In both cases the factor