Chiara Pulice – författare

This is the first study of Boko Haram that brings advanced data-driven, machine learning models to both learn models capable of predicting a wide range of attacks carried out by Boko Haram, as well as develop data-driven policies to shape Boko Haram’s behavior and reduce attacks by them. This book also identifies conditions that predict sexual violence, suicide bombings and attempted bombings, abduction, arson, looting, and targeting of government officials and security installations. 

After reducing Boko Haram’s history to a spreadsheet containing monthly information about different types of attacks and different circumstances prevailing over a 9 year period, this book introduces Temporal Probabilistic (TP) rules that can be automatically learned from data and are easy to explain to policy makers and security experts. This book additionally reports on over 1 year of forecasts made using the model in order to validate predictive accuracy. It also introduces a policy computation method to rein in Boko Haram’s attacks.

Applied machine learning researchers, machine learning experts and predictive modeling experts agree that this book is a valuable learning asset. Counter-terrorism experts, national and international security experts, public policy experts and Africa experts will also agree this book is a valuable learning tool.

One of the most influential actors in spreading Islamist violence across the Sahel is Jama’at Nasr Al Islam Wal Muslimin (JNIM).This book provides the first systematic quantitative analysis of JNIM’s behavior by analyzing a 12-year database of JNIM’s attacks and the environment surrounding JNIM. This book leverages AI/ML predictive models to accurately predict almost 40 types of attacks using over 80 independent variables. 

 This book describes a set of temporal probabilistic rules that state that when the environment in which the group operates satisfies some conditions, then an attack of a certain type will likely occur in the next N months.  This provides a deep, easy to comprehend understanding of the conditions under which JNIM carries various kinds of attacks up to 6 months into the future.

 This book will serve as an invaluable guide to scholars (computer scientists, political scientists, policy makers). Military officers, intelligence personnel, and government employees, who seek to understand, predict, and eventually mitigate attacks by JNIM and bring peace to the nations of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger will want to purchase this book as well.