Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism

Abstracts

Covert Affiliation Networks

Roy Lindelauf
Tilburg University, Netherlands

Abstract:

Decision makers in the business of national security, law enforcement and counterterrorism today are faced with an uncertain, adaptive and asymmetrical threat. A great need exists to understand and identify strategies to counter such covert organizations. Information about covert organizations is obtained by the partial observation of events related to operations. We develop methods to aid decision makers confronted with covert networks by characterizing their operations as affiliation networks. Such methods include the analysis of the one-mode projection of affiliation networks using information and secrecy measures developed for the analysis of covert networks. In this talk we present some of the findings of the ‘standard’ analysis of covert networks as well as possible extensions to the analysis of hypergraph structures representing operational data. Among others the use of game theoretical power indices in one-mode affiliation analysis will be discussed.

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