EAGER: ISN: Anticipatory Interdiction in Narco-Trafficking Networks

这一早期概念探索研究赠款项目将通过深入了解旨在破坏中美洲可卡因贩运网络的进程如何影响该区域和美国的公民安全，促进在科学理解非法供应网络方面取得进展。禁毒努力主要是为了夺取或扰乱南美来源区和美国市场之间的毒品运输，并仍然是美国供应侧毒品政策和国家安全战略的核心承诺。作为对这些努力的回应，贩运网络将现有的贩运路线分散到新的和更多的地点，造成了一个地理上不同的贩毒空间。这项研究建立了对毒品贩运网络的结构和功能及其与拦截努力的共同演变的跨学科理解，以调查不同的拦截方法可能如何影响贩毒者的空间、组织和经济行为。这项研究在操作工程学、地理学和犯罪学观点之间建立了新的智力桥梁，导致了为有效的药物政策提供信息所需的更全面和空间上更详细的见解。该奖项支持外联活动，以增加公众对由于美国毒品政策而导致的中美洲贩毒现状的了解。随之而来的教育计划将突破传统研究生教育的界限，以满足非法支持网络研究为政策提供信息的新需求。这项研究将调查贩毒网络在时间和空间上的适应行为，以应对中美洲可卡因过境区和相关海域内的各种拦截战略。将使用一个包括业务要素的以代理人为基础的综合模型来评估贩运路线上的可卡因流动和价格的空间和结构关系如何因应其他拦截战略而发生变化。这项研究代表了一种新的范式，在这种范式中，贩运者和拦截者之间的互动被设想为一个复杂的适应系统，并被建模为一种共同进化现象。综合模型将检验关于解释不断扩大的过境区中新出现的贩运节点的位置和范围的因素的假设。这些模型将通过综合禁毒数据库(CCDB)中数据的新应用进行参数化。利用犯罪学的视角，我们将绘制所谓的“过渡区”空间的脆弱性地图，以便能够对新的贩毒活动地点的环境和操作方面进行全面分析。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.