A new research collaboration between Rick Quax (UvA, Informatics Institute/Computational Science Lab), Paul Duijn (Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service, FIOD), Thijs Vis (National Police) and Peter Sloot (UvA, Institute for Advanced Study) recently received a grant of 1M euro from the Regional Information and Expertise Center (RIEC) in Amsterdam. RIEC is a network organisation that consists of various parties that play a role in law enforcement (the police, city administrations, the Public Prosecution Service, etcetera). It fosters public-private collaboration in tackling organised crime. Two PhD-students and one scientific programmer will work on the project “Computational modelling of criminal networks and value chains”, together with the above-mentioned team.

The idea is to interpret and model networks of organised crime as self-organising systems. In this approach ‘agents’ will be characterised by for example their interests, mutual trust, and capabilities. The team aims to model the adaptation of the networks, and to identify the information and money flows that run through the networks. The scientific programmer will work on visualisation, which allows the team to easily engage analysts of the RIEC in the project, and jointly develop novel analysis methods.

Dr. Rick Quax is the daily supervisor of the project. Prof. Peter Sloot is the promotor of the PhD students.