A Layered Social and Operational Network Analysis

To provide maximal disruption to a clandestine/terrorist network's ability to conduct missions, we must develop a means to determine the individuals' importance to the network and operations. In a network centric world, this importance is represented as an additive value of their criticality across the convergence of multiple layers of network connections. The connections layers of the network are comprised of social layers (Acquaintance, Friendship, Nuclear Family, Relatives, Student-Teacher, and Religious Mentors, Reverent Power and others), as well as layers representing interactions involving Resources, Knowledge/Skills and Temporal Local. The social criticality of an individual is measured by centrality. Event Trees and Risk Importance Measures are often used in a system reliability analysis to determine critical elements in the success or failure of operations. The inclusion of time and location importance will be determined by the observation of various group members at that local. The synergy gained from the application of these concepts to terror groups can be used to identify critical locations, resources and knowledge to their operations and can then be attributed to individuals connected to those essential elements. The combination of social and operational criticality can then be used to identify individuals whose removal or influence would disrupt or diminish network operations.