Disrupting Improvised Explosive Device Terror Campaigns Basic Research Opportunities: A Workshop Report (2008) / Chapter Skim
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For example, a more complete understanding of social networks and social network theory could help to reduce a population's support for an IED organization; studying the interactions between gangs and law enforcement personnel could result in improved counter-terrorist operations; understanding how money, or other forms of barter or trade, moves through communities along informal routes could help to reduce an adversary's ability to obtain funds; and research in neuroscience, cognition, and decision theory could improve human interaction with data and improve algorithms for filtering and analyzing data that result from persistent surveillance systems. The National Research Council recently convened a committee to write a report investigating basic research opportunities for countering the threat of IEDs (National Research Council 2007)
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Figure S.1 depicts one model of an IED threat chain, which includes obtaining funding and bomb materials, recruiting people, constructing the IEDs, selecting targets, delivering the devices to their targets, carrying out the attacks, observing and assessing the attacks, postattack evasion, and disseminating information about the attacks for training, propaganda, recruitment, or other purposes (National Research Council 2007)
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The human terrain provides the context for all counter-IED efforts. This context is a critical element in an IED campaign, but it is also the most complex and probably the least well understood (National Research Council 2007)
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2. What basic research can help to develop novel approaches and methods to manage, set priorities among, and deliver data, which may include observational and reduced data (such as analyst opinions and outputs of statistical models)
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Examples include the role of religion in the decision of the Provisional Irish Republican Army not to use suicide bombings and the use of violent means other than bomb attacks. Cultural, religious, and historical factors are also critical to a community's response to IED and counter-IED groups.
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Network and Threat Dynamics The National Research Council's 2007 report on IEDs noted that the adversary's ability to learn and adapt has been an important characteristic of IED campaigns (National Research Council 2007)
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Another theme that was evident in discussions was network modeling, especially modeling efforts that are able to capture the dynamic nature of networks in the face of partial or uncertain data. Availability of Data for Researchers As was the case in the first workshop, discussions throughout the second dealt with the need for publicly available databases that would allow expedient tests of models, methods, and hypotheses.
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Data on IED activities are generally collected in adversarial, civilian environments. That can lead to incomplete datasets because of the difficulty of collecting data consistently and collecting data with large, highly variable background signals and noise.
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Data from other conflicts, such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Algerian War of Independence, or other contexts, such as counternarcotics operations and efforts to detect and counter insider trading, could provide alternative datasets for researchers to test models, methods, and hypotheses. When specific data characteristics prevent such an approach, it may be possible to create artificial (synthetic)
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Interdisciplinary Research Given the broad scope of the IED problem, participants in both workshops emphasized that multidisciplinary research that integrates different disciplines should be encouraged. For example, research to develop methods for detecting telephone fraud benefited from interactions between computer scientists, statisticians, and members of the law-enforcement community.
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