PSIR (Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism)

Although a number of political governance and human rights indicators have been developed over the years, there are no analytical models that map these societal indicators to future radicalization. Here, we propose to research and develop an analytical software tool, PSIR (Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism) that predicts future radicalization based on current and historical societal indicators. For the societal indicators, we will evaluate scored political governance indicators collected in comparative political science research. For the radicalization metrics, we propose to develop a scoring process based that uses our in-house geocultural knowledge and statistics based on the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base. We propose to develop models that find the causal relationships between the societal indicators and radicalism metrics, and the parameters that define quantitatively the dependency among these indicators. Our tool will enable the analysis and prediction of radicalization across various dimensions, different regions, and countries in a GIS visualization environment. Our approach also learns the temporal evolution of these indicators so that the analysts can make predictions on future value of radicalization based on changes in current conditions. Our tool will help commanders develop more effective plans that address the cycle of behaviors sustaining criminal activity and IED networks.