Identifying the global terror hubs and vulnerable motifs using complex network dynamics

Terrorism instills fear in the minds of people and takes away the freedom of individuals to act as they will. Terrorism has turned out to be an international menace in the global community; every nation is getting affected, directly or indirectly. Here, we study the terrorist attack incidents which occurred in the last half century across the globe from the open source, Global terrorism database, and develop a view on their spatio-temporal dynamics. We construct a complex network of global terrorism and study its growth dynamics, along with the statistical properties of the network, which are quite intriguing. Normally, each nation pursues its own vision of international security based upon its mandate and particular notions of politics and its policies to counter the threat of terrorism that could naturally include the use of tactical measures and strategic negotiations, or even physical power. We study the resilience of the network against targeted attacks and random failures, which could guide the counter-terrorist outfits in designing strategies to fight terrorism. We then use a disparity filter method to isolate the backbone of the giant component, and identify the terror hubs and vulnerable motifs of global terrorism. We also examine the evolution of the hubs and motifs in a few exemplary cases like Afghanistan, Colombia, Israel, Peru and United Kingdom. The dynamics of the terror hubs and the vulnerable motifs that we discover in the network backbone can provide deep insight on their formations and spreading, and thereby help in contending terrorism or making public policies that can check their spread.