Change Detection in Social Networks; Final rept. Aug 2006-May 2007

摘要

Social network analysis (SNA) has become an important analytic tool for analyzing terrorist networks, friendly command and control structures, and a wide variety of other applications. This project proposes a new method for detecting change in social networks over time, by applying a cumulative sum statistical process control statistic to normally distributed network measures. The proposed method is able to detect organizational change in the same manner as a quality engineer can detect a change in a manufacturing process. The new algorithm is demonstrated on social network data collected on a group of 24 Army officers going through a 1-year graduate program at Columbia University and on al-Qaeda leading up to and immediately following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.