EAGER: ISN: Anticipatory Interdiction in Narco-Trafficking Networks

EARLY概念的探索性研究赠款（EAGER）项目将通过深入了解旨在破坏中美洲可卡因贩运网络的过程如何影响该地区和美国的公民安全，促进对非法供应网络的科学理解。禁毒阻截工作的主要目的是截获或破坏南美来源区和美国市场之间的毒品运输，这仍然是美国供应方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，贩毒网络将现有的贩毒路线分割成更多的新地点，从而形成了地理上多样化的贩毒空间。 这项研究建立了一个跨学科的理解的结构和功能的毒品贩运网络及其共同演变的阻截努力，以调查不同的阻截方法可能会影响贩运者的空间，组织和经济行为。这项研究在运营工程、地理和犯罪学视角之间建立了新的知识桥梁，从而为有效的毒品政策提供了更全面、更详细的见解。该奖项支持外联活动，以增加公众对美国毒品政策造成的中美洲毒品贩运现状的了解。伴随的教育计划将推动传统的研究生教育的界限，以满足非法支持网络研究的新兴需求，以告知policy.This研究将调查时间和空间的适应性行为的贩毒网络，以应对各种拦截战略内的可卡因过境区中美洲和相关海域。将使用一个包括业务要素的基于代理人的综合模型来评估可卡因流动和沿着贩运路线价格的空间和结构关系如何因替代拦截战略而发生变化。这项研究代表了一种新的范式，其中交通阻断的相互作用被认为是一个复杂的自适应系统，并作为一个共同进化的现象建模。综合模型将检验关于解释在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。这些模型将使用统一禁毒数据库（CCDB）数据的新应用程序进行参数化。通过犯罪学的透镜，我们将绘制所谓的“过境区”空间的脆弱性，以便对新的毒品贩运活动地点的环境和运营方面进行全面分析。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.