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A Global Measure for Estimating the Degree of Organization and Effectiveness of Individual Actors with Application to Terrorist Networks

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Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks ((LNSN))

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Sara Aghakhani, Khaled Dawoud, Reda Alhajj & Jon Rokne

  2. Department of Computer Science, Global University, Beirut, Lebanon

    Reda Alhajj

  3. Department of Information Technology, Hellenic American University, Manchester, NH, USA

    Reda Alhajj

Authors
  1. Sara Aghakhani
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  2. Khaled Dawoud
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  3. Reda Alhajj
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  4. Jon Rokne
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reda Alhajj .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Maersk McKinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230, Odense, Denmark

    Uffe Kock Wiil

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag/Wien

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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

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-0387-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-0388-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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