Mission statement

Complex adaptive systems consist of many *agents* which *interact*. The system is *decentralized*, i.e., there is no single agent which can oversee the entire system, let alone coordinate the actions of the other agents. All agents in the system operate *locally*. And yet, when zooming out, the entire system could turn out to exhibit non-trivial structure and have dynamic properties such as resilience and be highly adaptive — even if the agents do not possess such properties individually.

The case of organized crime appears to fit this description perfectly. For this reason, RIEC has partnered through the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) and collaborates with researchers from the Computational Science Lab (CSL). These researchers have a lot of experience with conceptualizing various phenomena as complex systems, modelling them mathematically or computationally, and studying their properties.

Our mission is to bring the data alive. Even if one would gather millions of records in a database about events in organized crime, it is impossible for a human to observe all the hidden structures behind the records. Even if one human could, it would still be impossible to mentally predict the future or to perform hypothetical what-if scenarios in a systematic way.

To find answers to such questions, models are needed. These models should be developed carefully and in collaboration with domain experts. Then the models should be made accessible in an interactive software environment which is also ‘future-proof’: acting as a place of continuous evolution where new models are developed and existing models are improved and linked together.