EAGER: ISN: Anticipatory Interdiction in Narco-Trafficking Networks

University Of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa AL

Investigators

Abstract

This EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will promote progress in scientific understanding of illicit supply networks by providing insights into how processes designed to disrupt Central American cocaine trafficking networks influence citizen security in the region and in the US. Counterdrug interdiction efforts are designed primarily to seize or disrupt drug shipments between South American source zones and US markets, and remain a core commitment of US supply-side drug policy and national security strategy. In response to these efforts, trafficking networks have fragmented existing trafficking routes into new and more numerous locations, resulting in a geographically diverse drug trafficking space. This research builds an interdisciplinary understanding of the structure and function of narco-trafficking networks and their co-evolution with interdiction efforts to investigate how different interdiction approaches might impact traffickers' spatial, organizational, and economic behavior. This research establishes new intellectual bridges between operations engineering, geographic, and criminological perspectives, leading to more comprehensive and spatially detailed insights needed to inform effective drug policy. This award supports outreach activities to increase public understanding about the current state of drug trafficking in Central America as a consequence of US drug policy. The accompanying education plan will push the boundaries of conventional graduate education to meet the emerging needs of illicit support network research to inform policy. This research will investigate temporally and spatially adaptive behaviors of narco-trafficking networks in response to various interdiction strategies within the cocaine transit zone of Central America and associated maritime areas. An integrated agent-based model that includes operational elements will be used to assess how the spatial and structural relationships of cocaine flows and prices along trafficking routes change in response to alternative interdiction strategies. This research represents a new paradigm in which trafficker-interdiction interactions are conceived of as a complex adaptive system and modeled as a co-evolutionary phenomenon. The integrated models will test hypotheses about the factors that explain the location and extent of emerging trafficking nodes in an expanding transit zone. The models will be parameterized with a novel application of data from the Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB). Using a criminological lens, we will map the vulnerability of spaces in the so-called "transit zone" to enable a holistic analysis of the environmental and operational aspects of locations of new narco-trafficking activity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.