Accomplishments

Improving Security During Public Events

LAS provided support for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Leading up to the Olympics, Brazil was experiencing significant social unrest, with multiple marches and riots occurring daily throughout the country. LAS’s work enhanced the security of Olympics attendees by using publicly available information to predict in real-time the locations of large-scale public demonstrations around Rio. Software created by LAS connected information from bus and train services in real time, alerting officials to potential safety issues for athletes and attendees during the influx of protests.

Predicting Radicalization

To gain insight into terrorist attacks, LAS researchers use forensic psychology to discover evidence-based predictors of political, social or religious radicalization. By studying the intersection of social and data sciences, LAS has worked to identify correlates of terrorism involvement and characteristics of women involved in jihadism-inspired terrorism. LAS developed methodologies that assess the impact of adversarial influence operations on a specific audience, and determine internal and external variables that affect a person’s inclination to be influenced by a campaign.

Understanding Influence Campaigns

LAS has developed a variety of tools and methods to track state-sponsored, geopolitical and economic campaigns designed to influence a targeted audience. For example, LAS created a geospatial visualization tool (led by work from an NC State undergraduate Park Scholar) to monitor the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and show the scope of China’s economic influence in other countries.