Novel Algorithm, Inspired by Bee Colonies’ Behavior, Will Help Dismantling Criminal Social Networks

Many complex interaction systems linked to nature and related to mankind are structured in a complex network, that is, they are made up of a series of interrelated actors. Social networks are a very recent example of this. Some networks are pernicious because of their potential to cause harm to people, critical infrastructures and economic interests.

The classic (and also the most natural and intuitive) method for dismantling a network is to identify its main actors and take action on them. However, this strategy does not ensure that the resulting network is totally devoid of organizational and reconstructive power, and it may continue to cause harm.

“In order to achieve the most effective way of dismantling a network it is necessary to develop and put into action an optimization process that analyzes a multitude of situations and selects the best option in the shortest time possible. It’s something similar to what a chess program does when identifying, predicting and checking the possible steps or paths that may occur in a game of chess from a given moment and movement”, Humberto Trujillo Mendoza, from the Department of Methodology of Behavioral Sciences at the UGR and one of the authors of the paper, explains.

As the authors explain, “the subtlety with which groups or colonies of relatively simple living beings (ants, termites, bees, etc.) are able to solve vital problems to survive is a proof of the effectiveness of evolution”. By means of certain interrelationships among the members of a colony, a collective behavior emerges from that colony, and it allows them to efficiently react to problematic environmental situations. That task, applied by the UGR to the field of Artificial Intelligence, would be impossible to be carried out by individual members of the colony.

At present, this research group is working on the development of other algorithms similar to the one described. This time, they are doing so to determine the nodes of the social network which certain “infiltrators” must relate with, in order to increase the quantity and quality of the information gathered to improve the knowledge of the relations between the other actors, thus optimizing the dismantling of the network.

This line of research is financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (MINECO / FEDER) within the framework of the Research Project with Reference DER2015-63857-R, and by the Project 18/16 CEMIX UGR- MADOC

Contacts and sources:
Manuel Lozano Márquez
Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial (Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence),  University of Granada  UGR

Manuel Lozano, Carlos García-Martínez, Francisco J. Rodríguez, Humberto M. Trujillo
Information Sciences. Volume 377, 20 January 2017, Pages 30–50
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2016.10.014

Optimización de Ataques a Redes Complejas Mediante un Algoritmo de Colonias de Abejas Artificiales
Manuel Lozano, Carlos García-Martínez, Francisco J. Rodríguez, and Humberto M. Trujillo
Actas de la XVII Conferencia de la Asociación Española para la Inteligencia Artificial, pp. 103-112
Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca