Abstract
The motivation for the study described in this paper is realizing the fact that organizational structure of a group and critical members of the group are key indicators in determining its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, a general knowledge of the prevalent models of terrorist organizations leads to a better understanding of their capabilities. Though the framework is general, this chapter focuses more on terrorist networks; it is divided in two parts. The first part describes a novel approach for extracting structural patterns of terrorist networks with the help of social network analysis (SNA) measurements and techniques. A global organization measure (Org) is proposed in order to estimate the degree of organization of a social network. The second part contains a new approach which helps to find the group of the most influential people within the terrorist networks. To achieve this target, we utilize SNA measurements and techniques. The importance of such research comes from the fact that individuals in organized intellectual networks and especially terrorist networks tend to hide their individual roles and also, a general knowledge of the prevalent models of terrorist organizations leads to a better understanding of their capabilities. As a result, we argue the need to consider such networks as a whole and at the individuals’ level for discovering the degree of organization with its strengths and weaknesses. The reported test results demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the analysis as depicted in the proposed framework.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ashworth, M.J.: Identifying key contributors to performance in organizations: The case for knowledge-based measures. In: NAACSOS Conference Proceedings (2003)
Baker, W.E., Faulkner, R.R.: The social organization of conspiracy: Illegal networks in the heavy electrical equipment industry. Am. Sociol. Rev. 837–860 (1993)
Carley, K.M.: Dynamic network analysis. In: Breiger, R., Carely, K.M. (eds.) In the Summary of the NRC Workshop on Social Network Modeling and Analysis. National Research Council (2003)
Carley, K.M., Reminga, J., Kamneva, N.: Destabilizing terrorist networks. In: NAACSOS Conference Proceedings. Pittsburgh, PA (2003)
Carrington P.J., Scott J., Wasserman S.: Models and Methods in Social Network Analysis. Cambridge university press, Cambridge (2005)
Criminal Network Analysis Training Course. Defense Intelligence Agency (2000)
Degenne, A., Forsé, M.: Introducing social networks. Sage, London (1999)
Doreian, P., Stokman, F.N.: Evolution of Social Network. Gordon and Breach Publishers, Amsterdam (1997)
Farely, D.J.: Breaking Al Qaeda cells: A mathematical analysis of counterterrorism operations. Stud. Confl. Terrorism 26, 399–411 (2003)
Freeman, L.C.: A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness. Sociometry 40, 35–41 (1977)
Freeman, L.C.: Centrality in social networks I: Conceptual clarification. Soc. Netw. 1, 215–239 (1979)
Freeman, L.C.: The gatekeeper, pair-dependency and structural centrality. Qual. Quant. 585–592 (1980)
Freeman, L.C., White, D.R., Romney, A.K.: Research Methods in Social Network Analysis. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, N.J. (1992)
Jialun, Q., Xu, J.J., Daning, H., Sageman, M., Chen, H.: Analyzing terrorist networks: A case study of the global Salafi Jihad network. In: Proceedings ofIEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics, pp. 287–304. Atlanta, GA (2005)
Jung, J.J.: Query transformation based on semantic centrality in semantic social network. J. Univers. Comput. Sci. 14(7) (2008)
Kanungo, T., Mount, D.M., Netanyahu, N.S., Piatko, C., Silverman, R., Wu, A.Y.: The analysis of a simple k-mean clustering algorithm. In: Proceedings of 16th Annual Symposium of Computational Geometry, pp. 100–109. (2000)
Kanungo, T., Mount, D.M., Netanyahu, N.S., Piatko, C.D., Silverman, R., Wu, A.Y.: An efficient k-mean clustering algorithm: Analysis and implementation. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 24(7), 881–892 (2002)
Kleinberg, J.M.: Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment. In: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp. 668–677. (1998)
Klerks, P.: The network paradigm applied to criminal organizations. Connections 24(3) (2001)
Klerks, P.: The network paradigm applied to criminal organizations. Connections 24(3) (2001)
Krebs, V.: Mapping terrorist networks. Connections 24(3) (2002)
Knoke, D., Yang, S.: Social network analysis. Series: Quantitative applications in Social Sciences. Sage publication, London (2008)
MacQueen, J.B.: Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations. In: Proceedings of 5th Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, pp. 281–297. Berkeley, University of California Press (1967)
Memon, N., Larsen, L.H.: Practical algorithm for destabilizing terrorist network. Intelligence and Security Informatics. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3975, pp. 389–400. Springer, Berlin (2006)
Memon, N., Wiil, U.K., Qureshi, A.R.: Design and development of an early warning system to prevent terrorist attacks. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks, pp. 222–226. (2009)
Memon, N., Wiil, U.K., Alhajj, R., Atzenbeck, C., Harkiolakis, N.: Harvesting covert networks: The case study of the iMiner database. J. Netw. Virtual Organ. 8(1/2), 52–74 (2011)
Scott, J.: Trend report: Social network analysis. Sociology 109–27 (1998)
Shaikh, M.A., Wang, J.: Discovering hierarchical structure in terrorist networks. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Technologies, pp. 238–244. (2006)
Sparrow, M.K.: The application of network analysis to criminal intelligence: An assessment of the prospects. Soc. Netw. 13(3), 251–274 (1991)
Strogatz, S.H.: Exploring complex networks. Nature 410, 268–276 (2002)
Tsvetovat, M., Carley, K.M.: Structural knowledge and success of anti-terrorist activity: The downside of structural equivalence. J. Soc. Struct. 6(2) (2005)
Wasserman, S., Faust, K.: Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)
Xu, J., Chen, H.: CrimeNet explorer: A framework for criminal network knowledge discovery. ACM Trans. Inform. Syst. 23(2), 201–226 (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag/Wien
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Aghakhani, S., Dawoud, K., Alhajj, R., Rokne, J. (2011). A Global Measure for Estimating the Degree of Organization and Effectiveness of Individual Actors with Application to Terrorist Networks. In: Wiil, U.K. (eds) Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-0387-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-0388-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)