Design and Implementation of an Agent-based Social Model of Terrorist Networks based on Social Network Analysis Techniques

David García Martín. (2017). Design and Implementation of an Agent-based Social Model of Terrorist Networks based on Social Network Analysis Techniques. Trabajo Fin de Titulación (TFG). ETSI Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Abstract:
Nowadays with the recent terrorist attacks, prevention and surveillance have become increasingly important consideration within society and security forces. The way how people communicates has changed through the past years becoming more relevant Social Networks, where everyone can exchange messages, images and videos. Thus, there is a need for developing new ways of analysing terrorist behaviour in order to anticipate and comprehend their modus operandi for being able to neutralize future terrorist attacks. With regard to all these considerations, the project will be based on Social Network Analysis Techniques. Terrorist organizations continuously expand their networks through real-time information exchange, enabling operatives to organize, spread information and recruit new members into the organization. Hence, there is a relationship between Social Networks in which we can study how information is shared and how people become members of groups or even new friend relationships. The project is divided into several phases related to the analysis of Social Networks. First of all, there is a study of Social Networks behaviour and network types. Subsequently, after analysing these networks, an Agent-based Social Model will be designed taking into account how information is spread and how networks expand. Finally, after the simulation of Social Networks, a Terrorist Network will be rendered being able to identify different agents and visualizing network expansion. As we have seen, the objective of this project is not only the study, design and simulation of networks models, but also understand terrorist behaviour and how these organizations expand and work. To do so, different techniques will be applied to design and develop terrorist behaviour models on Python, evaluating and simulating useful information such as information spread, agent types and other characteristics of terrorist networks using a variety of network topologies and methods of manipulating network structure. In order to visualize the results of these techniques and network expansion, all the data will be rendered using the tool Gephi for graph visualization. In this way, visualization will make easy to understand and analyze the project results, with the aim of preventing other attacks and be one step ahead from terrorist intentions and movements. As a result, this project will allow an extensive analysis of Social Networks structure and behaviour, pointing out how organizations expand affecting all type of agents.