V.S. Subrahmanian

One of the most influential actors in spreading Islamist violence across the Sahel is Jama’at Nasr Al Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM).This book provides the first systematic quantitative analysis of JNIM’s behavior by analyzing a 12-year database of JNIM’s attacks and the environment surrounding JNIM. This book leverages AI/ML predictive models to accurately predict almost 40 types of attacks using over 80 independent variables. This book describes a set of temporal probabilistic rules that state that when the environment in which the group operates satisfies some conditions, then an attack of a certain type will likely occur in the next N months. This provides a deep, easy to comprehend understanding of the conditions under which JNIM carries various kinds of attacks up to 6 months into the future. This book will serve as an invaluable guide to scholars (computer scientists, political scientists, policy makers). Military officers, intelligence personnel, and government employees, who seek to understand, predict, and eventually mitigate attacks by JNIM and bring peace to the nations of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger will want to purchase this book as well.

This is the first study of Boko Haram that brings advanced data-driven, machine learning models to both learn models capable of predicting a wide range of attacks carried out by Boko Haram, as well as develop data-driven policies to shape Boko Haram’s behavior and reduce attacks by them. This book also identifies conditions that predict sexual violence, suicide bombings and attempted bombings, abduction, arson, looting, and targeting of government officials and security installations. After reducing Boko Haram’s history to a spreadsheet containing monthly information about different types of attacks and different circumstances prevailing over a 9 year period, this book introduces Temporal Probabilistic (TP) rules that can be automatically learned from data and are easy to explain to policy makers and security experts. This book additionally reports on over 1 year of forecasts made using the model in order to validate predictive accuracy. It also introduces a policy computation method to rein in Boko Haram’s attacks.Applied machine learning researchers, machine learning experts and predictive modeling experts agree that this book is a valuable learning asset. Counter-terrorism experts, national and international security experts, public policy experts and Africa experts will also agree this book is a valuable learning tool.

This is the first study of Boko Haram that brings advanced data-driven, machine learning models to both learn models capable of predicting a wide range of attacks carried out by Boko Haram, as well as develop data-driven policies to shape Boko Haram’s behavior and reduce attacks by them. This book also identifies conditions that predict sexual violence, suicide bombings and attempted bombings, abduction, arson, looting, and targeting of government officials and security installations. After reducing Boko Haram’s history to a spreadsheet containing monthly information about different types of attacks and different circumstances prevailing over a 9 year period, this book introduces Temporal Probabilistic (TP) rules that can be automatically learned from data and are easy to explain to policy makers and security experts. This book additionally reports on over 1 year of forecasts made using the model in order to validate predictive accuracy. It also introduces a policy computation method to rein in Boko Haram’s attacks.Applied machine learning researchers, machine learning experts and predictive modeling experts agree that this book is a valuable learning asset. Counter-terrorism experts, national and international security experts, public policy experts and Africa experts will also agree this book is a valuable learning tool.

This Springer Brief presents a basic algorithm that provides a correct solution to finding an optimal state change attempt, as well as an enhanced algorithm that is built on top of the well-known trie data structure. It explores correctness and algorithmic complexity results for both algorithms and experiments comparing their performance on both real-world and synthetic data. Topics addressed include optimal state change attempts, state change effectiveness, different kind of effect estimators, planning under uncertainty and experimental evaluation. These topics will help researchers analyze tabular data, even if the data contains states (of the world) and events (taken by an agent) whose effects are not well understood. Event DBs are omnipresent in the social sciences and may include diverse scenarios from political events and the state of a country to education-related actions and their effects on a school system. With a wide range of applications in computer science and the social sciences, the information in this Springer Brief is valuable for professionals and researchers dealing with tabular data, artificial intelligence and data mining. The applications are also useful for advanced-level students of computer science.

After a discussion of the theory of software agents, this book presents IMPACT (Interactive Maryland Platform for Agents Collaborating Together), an experimental agent infrastructure that translates formal theories of agency into a functional multiagent system that can extend legacy software code and application-specific or legacy data structures.Software agents are the latest advance in the trend toward smaller, modular pieces of code, where each module performs a well-defined, focused task or set of tasks. Programmed to interact with and provide services to other agents, including humans, software agents act autonomously with prescribed backgrounds, beliefs, and operations. Systems of agents can access and manipulate heterogeneously stored data such as that found on the Internet.After a discussion of the theory of software agents, this book presents IMPACT (Interactive Maryland Platform for Agents Collaborating Together), an experimental agent infrastructure that translates formal theories of agency into a functional multiagent system that can extend legacy software code and application-specific or legacy data structures. The book describes three sample applications: a store, a self-correcting auto-pilot, and a supply chain.

This is the first book that uses cyber-vulnerability data to explore the vulnerability of over four million machines per year, covering a two-year period as reported by Symantec. Analyzing more than 20 billion telemetry reports comprising malware and binary reputation reports, this book quantifies the cyber-vulnerability of 44 countries for which at least 500 hosts were monitored. Chapters explain the context for this data and its impact, along with explaining how the cyber-vulnerability is calculated. This book also contains a detailed summary of the cyber-vulnerability of dozens of nations according to the percentage of infected hosts and number of infections. It identifies relationships between piracy rates, GDP and other country indicators. The book contains detailed information about potential cyber-security policies that 44 countries have announced, as well as an analysis of gaps in cyber-security policies in general. The Global Cyber-Vulnerability Report targets researchers and professionals including government and military workers, policy-makers and law-makers working in cybersecurity or the web intelligence fields. Advanced-level students in computer science will also find this report valuable as a reference.

Advance Praise for Indian Mujahideen: Computational Analysis and Public Policy “This book presents a highly innovative computational approach to analyzing the strategic behavior of terrorist groups and formulating counter-terrorism policies. It would be very useful for international security analysts and policymakers.” Uzi Arad, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel and Head, Israel National Security Council (2009-2011) “An important book on a complex security problem. Issues have been analysed in depth based on quality research. Insightful and well-balanced in describing the way forward.” Naresh Chandra, Indian Ambassador to the USA (1996-2001) and Cabinet Secretary (1990-1992). “An objective and clinical account of the origins, aims, extra-territorial links and modus-operandi, of a growingly dangerous terrorist organization that challenges the federal, democratic, secular and pluralistic ethos of India’s polity. The authors have meticulously researched and analysed the multi-faceted challenges that the “Indian Mujahideen” poses and realistically dwelt on the ways in which these challenges could be faced and overcome.” G. Parthasarathy, High Commissioner of India to Australia (1995-1998) and Pakistan (1998-2000). This book provides the first in-depth look at how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology can influence insights on analysis and policies directed at the Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorist group. The book also summarizes how the IM group is committed to the destabilization of India by leveraging links with other terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, and through support from the Pakistani Government and Pakistan’s intelligence service.Foreword by The Hon. Louis J. Freeh.

This is the first book that uses cyber-vulnerability data to explore the vulnerability of over four million machines per year, covering a two-year period as reported by Symantec. Analyzing more than 20 billion telemetry reports comprising malware and binary reputation reports, this book quantifies the cyber-vulnerability of 44 countries for which at least 500 hosts were monitored. Chapters explain the context for this data and its impact, along with explaining how the cyber-vulnerability is calculated. This book also contains a detailed summary of the cyber-vulnerability of dozens of nations according to the percentage of infected hosts and number of infections. It identifies relationships between piracy rates, GDP and other country indicators. The book contains detailed information about potential cyber-security policies that 44 countries have announced, as well as an analysis of gaps in cyber-security policies in general. The Global Cyber-Vulnerability Report targets researchers and professionals including government and military workers, policy-makers and law-makers working in cybersecurity or the web intelligence fields. Advanced-level students in computer science will also find this report valuable as a reference.

Imagine yourself as a military officer in a conflict zone trying to identify locations of weapons caches supporting road-side bomb attacks on your country’s troops. Or imagine yourself as a public health expert trying to identify the location of contaminated water that is causing diarrheal diseases in a local population. Geospatial abduction is a new technique introduced by the authors that allows such problems to be solved. Geospatial Abduction provides the mathematics underlying geospatial abduction and the algorithms to solve them in practice; it has wide applicability and can be used by practitioners and researchers in many different fields. Real-world applications of geospatial abduction to military problems are included. Compelling examples drawn from other domains as diverse as criminology, epidemiology and archaeology are covered as well. This book also includes access to a dedicated website on geospatial abduction hosted by University of Maryland. Geospatial Abduction targets practitioners working in general AI, game theory, linear programming, data mining, machine learning, and more. Those working in the fields of computer science, mathematics, geoinformation, geological and biological science will also find this book valuable.

Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba provides an in-depth look at Web intelligence, and how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology can influence the insights we have on terrorist groups. This book primarily focuses on one famous terrorist group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (or LeT), and how it operates. After 10 years of counter Al Qaeda operations, LeT is considered by many in the counter-terrorism community to be an even greater threat to the US and world peace than Al Qaeda. Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba is the first book that demonstrates how to use modern computational analysis techniques including methods for “big data” analysis. This book presents how to quantify both the environment in which LeT operate, and the actions it took over a 20-year period, and represent it as a relational database table. This table is then mined using sophisticated data mining algorithms in order to gain detailed, mathematical, computational and statistical insights into LeT and its operations. This book also provides a detailed history of Lashkar-e-Taiba based on extensive analysis conducted by using open source information and public statements. Each chapter includes a case study, as well as a slide describing the key results which are available on the authors’ web sites.Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba is designed for a professional market composed of government or military workers, researchers and computer scientists working in the web intelligence field. Advanced-level students in computer science will also find this valuable as a reference book.

Advance Praise for Indian Mujahideen: Computational Analysis and Public Policy “This book presents a highly innovative computational approach to analyzing the strategic behavior of terrorist groups and formulating counter-terrorism policies. It would be very useful for international security analysts and policymakers.” Uzi Arad, National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel and Head, Israel National Security Council (2009-2011) “An important book on a complex security problem. Issues have been analysed in depth based on quality research. Insightful and well-balanced in describing the way forward.” Naresh Chandra, Indian Ambassador to the USA (1996-2001) and Cabinet Secretary (1990-1992). “An objective and clinical account of the origins, aims, extra-territorial links and modus-operandi, of a growingly dangerous terrorist organization that challenges the federal, democratic, secular and pluralistic ethos of India’s polity. The authors have meticulously researched and analysed the multi-faceted challenges that the “Indian Mujahideen” poses and realistically dwelt on the ways in which these challenges could be faced and overcome.” G. Parthasarathy, High Commissioner of India to Australia (1995-1998) and Pakistan (1998-2000). This book provides the first in-depth look at how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology can influence insights on analysis and policies directed at the Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorist group. The book also summarizes how the IM group is committed to the destabilization of India by leveraging links with other terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, and through support from the Pakistani Government and Pakistan’s intelligence service.Foreword by The Hon. Louis J. Freeh.

This SpringerBrief proposes a general framework for reasoning about inconsistency in a wide variety of logics, including inconsistency resolution methods that have not yet been studied. The proposed framework allows users to specify preferences on how to resolve inconsistency when there are multiple ways to do so. This empowers users to resolve inconsistency in data leveraging both their detailed knowledge of the data as well as their application needs. The brief shows that the framework is well-suited to handle inconsistency in several logics, and provides algorithms to compute preferred options. Finally, the brief shows that the framework not only captures several existing works, but also supports reasoning about inconsistency in several logics for which no such methods exist today.

Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba provides an in-depth look at Web intelligence, and how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology can influence the insights we have on terrorist groups. This book primarily focuses on one famous terrorist group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (or LeT), and how it operates. After 10 years of counter Al Qaeda operations, LeT is considered by many in the counter-terrorism community to be an even greater threat to the US and world peace than Al Qaeda. Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba is the first book that demonstrates how to use modern computational analysis techniques including methods for “big data” analysis. This book presents how to quantify both the environment in which LeT operate, and the actions it took over a 20-year period, and represent it as a relational database table. This table is then mined using sophisticated data mining algorithms in order to gain detailed, mathematical, computational and statistical insights into LeT and its operations. This book also provides a detailed history of Lashkar-e-Taiba based on extensive analysis conducted by using open source information and public statements. Each chapter includes a case study, as well as a slide describing the key results which are available on the authors’ web sites.Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba is designed for a professional market composed of government or military workers, researchers and computer scientists working in the web intelligence field. Advanced-level students in computer science will also find this valuable as a reference book.

Imagine yourself as a military officer in a conflict zone trying to identify locations of weapons caches supporting road-side bomb attacks on your country’s troops. Or imagine yourself as a public health expert trying to identify the location of contaminated water that is causing diarrheal diseases in a local population. Geospatial abduction is a new technique introduced by the authors that allows such problems to be solved. Geospatial Abduction provides the mathematics underlying geospatial abduction and the algorithms to solve them in practice; it has wide applicability and can be used by practitioners and researchers in many different fields. Real-world applications of geospatial abduction to military problems are included. Compelling examples drawn from other domains as diverse as criminology, epidemiology and archaeology are covered as well. This book also includes access to a dedicated website on geospatial abduction hosted by University of Maryland. Geospatial Abduction targets practitioners working in general AI, game theory, linear programming, data mining, machine learning, and more. Those working in the fields of computer science, mathematics, geoinformation, geological and biological science will also find this book valuable.