TERRORISM FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: INFLUENCE AND NETWORK STRUCTURE ANALYSIS

While terrorism is not new, today’s terrorist threat is different from that of the past. Terrorism has evolved, and terrorist groups today are more structured and better organized. Modern technology enables terrorists to plan and operate worldwide as never before. Through the constant exchange of information between parties, perpetrator groups may influence or be influenced by other perpetrator groups to improve their efficacy. This study moves away from the traditional analysis of terrorist groups and examines terrorist networks from a global perspective. Using network science and our proposed methodology to calculate influence strength, this thesis looks at the extent of influence of one perpetrator group with another based on their activities and locations. We observe that some perpetrator groups, like ISIL and Al–Nusrah Front, have high and increasing influence strength. Some of these perpetrator groups are, from a network science perspective, neighbors. In addition, the community detection algorithm shows that most of the perpetrator groups with high influence strength exist within the same network-defined community. Our proposed influence score metric allows measurement of a node's actual influence score based on the responses of other nodes around it, as compared to existing measures, which determine the node's influential strength by its position in the network. We hope our study provides insights into terrorism and how influence spreads among perpetrators.http://archive.org/details/terrorismfromagl1094560417Outstanding ThesisArmy, SingaporeApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Optimizing target nodes selection for the control energy of directed complex networks

The energy needed in controlling a complex network is a problem of practical importance. Recent works have focused on the reduction of control energy either via strategic placement of driver nodes, or by decreasing the cardinality of nodes to be controlled. However, optimizing control energy with respect to target nodes selection has yet been considered. In this work, we propose an iterative method based on Stiefel manifold optimization of selectable target node matrix to reduce control energy. We derive the matrix derivative gradient needed for the search algorithm in a general way, and search for target nodes which result in reduced control energy, assuming that driver nodes placement is fixed. Our findings reveal that the control energy is optimal when the path distances from driver nodes to target nodes are minimized. We corroborate our algorithm with extensive simulations on elementary network topologies, random and scale-free networks, as well as various real networks. The simulation results show that the control energy found using our algorithm outperforms heuristic selection strategies for choosing target nodes by a few orders of magnitude. Our work may be applicable to opinion networks, where one is interested in identifying the optimal group of individuals that the driver nodes can influence

Urban Agriculture: The Feasibility of Rooftop Farming in Penang Island, Malaysia

By 2050, over 60 percent of the global population will live in cities, the majority in high-rise residential buildings. Thus, rooftop farming as part of urban agriculture will be highly important in building sustainable cities. It brings plenty of benefits and opportunities to the environment and society, as well as food supply to urban residents. Singapore, as a land-scarce state, has been very successful in implementing rooftop farming. Even though having a similar geographical condition as Singapore, rooftop farming has yet to be popularized in Penang Island. Rapid development and industrialization are deteriorating air quality and occupying arable land on the island, while the population is highly dependent on imported food. Rooftop farming may be a good option to reduce these problems, seeing there are so many high-rise residential buildings on the island. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the likelihood of rooftop farming by island residents, and its determinants. Data collected from 323 Penangites that live in high-rise residential buildings revealed that 65 percent of respondents were likely to participate in rooftop farming. The ordered Probit model estimated that awareness of the potential benefits of rooftop farming, environmental knowledge and awareness, environmental consciousness and perception are important factors that determine the likelihood of participating in rooftop farming. The findings of this study may be important for Penang state policy makers, and may also be useful for similar economies globally, to promote, encourage and implement rooftop farming in urban areas, and achieve sustainable cities for future generations

Urban Agriculture: The Feasibility of Rooftop Farming in Penang Island, Malaysia

By 2050, over 60 percent of the global population will live in cities, the majority in high-rise residential buildings. Thus, rooftop farming as part of urban agriculture will be highly important in building sustainable cities. It brings plenty of benefits and opportunities to the environment and society, as well as food supply to urban residents. Singapore, as a land-scarce state, has been very successful in implementing rooftop farming. Even though having a similar geographical condition as Singapore, rooftop farming has yet to be popularized in Penang Island. Rapid development and industrialization are deteriorating air quality and occupying arable land on the island, while the population is highly dependent on imported food. Rooftop farming may be a good option to reduce these problems, seeing there are so many high-rise residential buildings on the island. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the likelihood of rooftop farming by island residents, and its determinants. Data collected from 323 Penangites that live in high-rise residential buildings revealed that 65 percent of respondents were likely to participate in rooftop farming. The ordered Probit model estimated that awareness of the potential benefits of rooftop farming, environmental knowledge and awareness, environmental consciousness and perception are important factors that determine the likelihood of participating in rooftop farming. The findings of this study may be important for Penang state policy makers, and may also be useful for similar economies globally, to promote, encourage and implement rooftop farming in urban areas, and achieve sustainable cities for future generations

Energy cost study for controlling complex social networks with conformity behavior

In order to understand controlling a complex system, an estimation of the required effort needed to achieve control is vital. Previous works have addressed this issue by studying the scaling laws of energy cost in a general way with continuous-time linear dynamics. However, continuous-time linear dynamics is unable to capture conformity behavior, which is common in many complex social systems. Therefore, to understand controlling social systems with conformity, discrete-time modelling is used and the energy cost scaling laws are derived. The results are validated numerically with model and real networks. In addition, the energy costs needed for controlling systems with and without conformity are compared, and it was found that controlling networked systems with conformity features always requires less control energy. Finally, it is shown through simulations that heterogeneous scale-free networks are less controllable, requiring a higher number of minimum drivers. Since the conformity-based model relates to various complex systems, such as flocking, or evolutionary games, the results of this paper represent a step forward towards developing realistic control of complex social systems

An Evaluation of Blended Courses: Reflections from Undergraduates

Blended learning approaches are increasingly adopted in the higher education context, with various levels of success. This study explored students’ experiences and evaluations of a blended course in an undergraduate’s programme in information systems at a New Zealand university. This paper presents ten emerged themes, drawing on six in-depth focus groups’ interviews with undergraduates. The themes indicate that students are not only accepting of blended approaches but also perceived blended approaches useful for their learning and enjoyable to a certain extent. The emerged themes also uncover students’ reflections of their learning abilities and preferences in instances of the rising uptake of blended approaches across the higher education context. These study findings are potentially useful in providing practical contributions by informing learning institutions’ key considerations when implementing blended approaches to undergraduates who are relatively new to the method and learning environment

Investigating Information Systems Infusion and the Moderating Role of Habit: A User Empowerment Perspective

Organizations have made significant investments in information systems (IS) implementation. However, more than half of these IS implementations have reported failures due to underutilization. Although it is known that IS infusion is required for realizing expected returns on investments, most IS research has focused on initial adoption and continuance with only a handful examined infusion. These few IS infusion studies have produced inconclusive results as they have employed models and factors that are used for adoption and continued use. Compare to adoption and continuance, IS infusion requires authentic motivation of users. Thus, this study examines IS infusion using user empowerment as the authentic motivation based on the psychological empowerment theory which can explain employee’s behavior beyond management prescription. Results show that the four user empowerment dimensions have significant effects on the three IS infusion subtypes. Further, results show that habit attenuates the importance of user competence for extended use and integrative use but reinforces the importance of usage meaning for extended use and user self-determination for integrative use. This study advances our theoretical understanding of IS infusion and offers suggestions to organizations in achieving IS infusion