In the last 20 years, terrorism has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and massive economic, political, and humanitarian crises in several regions of the world. Using real-world data on attacks occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2018, we propose the use of temporal meta-graphs and deep learning to forecast future terrorist targets. Focusing on three event dimensions, i.e., employed weapons, deployed tactics and chosen targets, meta-graphs map the connections among temporally close attacks, capturing their operational similarities and dependencies. From these temporal meta-graphs, we derive 2-day-based time series that measure the centrality of each feature within each dimension over time. Formulating the problem in the context of the strategic behavior of terrorist actors, these multivariate temporal sequences are then utilized to learn what target types are at the highest risk of being chosen. The paper makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates that engineering the feature space via temporal meta-graphs produces richer knowledge than shallow time-series that only rely on frequency of feature occurrences. Second, the performed experiments reveal that bi-directional LSTM networks achieve superior forecasting performance compared to other algorithms, calling for future research aiming at fully discovering the potential of artificial intelligence to counter terrorist violence.

Learning future terrorist targets through temporal meta-graphs / Campedelli, G. M.; Bartulovic, M.; Carley, K. M.. - In: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS. - ISSN 2045-2322. - ELETTRONICO. - 11:1(2021), p. 8533. [10.1038/s41598-021-87709-7]

Learning future terrorist targets through temporal meta-graphs

Campedelli G. M.;
2021-01-01

Abstract

In the last 20 years, terrorism has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and massive economic, political, and humanitarian crises in several regions of the world. Using real-world data on attacks occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2018, we propose the use of temporal meta-graphs and deep learning to forecast future terrorist targets. Focusing on three event dimensions, i.e., employed weapons, deployed tactics and chosen targets, meta-graphs map the connections among temporally close attacks, capturing their operational similarities and dependencies. From these temporal meta-graphs, we derive 2-day-based time series that measure the centrality of each feature within each dimension over time. Formulating the problem in the context of the strategic behavior of terrorist actors, these multivariate temporal sequences are then utilized to learn what target types are at the highest risk of being chosen. The paper makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates that engineering the feature space via temporal meta-graphs produces richer knowledge than shallow time-series that only rely on frequency of feature occurrences. Second, the performed experiments reveal that bi-directional LSTM networks achieve superior forecasting performance compared to other algorithms, calling for future research aiming at fully discovering the potential of artificial intelligence to counter terrorist violence.
2021
1
Campedelli, G. M.; Bartulovic, M.; Carley, K. M.
Learning future terrorist targets through temporal meta-graphs / Campedelli, G. M.; Bartulovic, M.; Carley, K. M.. - In: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS. - ISSN 2045-2322. - ELETTRONICO. - 11:1(2021), p. 8533. [10.1038/s41598-021-87709-7]
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
s41598-021-87709-7.pdf

accesso aperto

Tipologia: Versione editoriale (Publisher’s layout)
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 2.39 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
2.39 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/343607
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? 0
  • Scopus 14
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 12
social impact