Behavioural Analytics: Mathematics of the Mind
This work addresses the need for automated behavioral analytics in defense and security to assess threats from large data volumes, though it appears incremental by applying existing methods like Bayesian networks and machine learning to new data.
The paper tackles the problem of analyzing behavioral data from quotes in multiple languages to identify threats and trends, presenting results where algorithms correctly identify extreme statements and detect trends and shifts in attitudes across individuals, groups, and populations.
Behavioural analytics provides insights into individual and crowd behaviour, enabling analysis of what previously happened and predictions for how people may be likely to act in the future. In defence and security, this analysis allows organisations to achieve tactical and strategic advantage through influence campaigns, a key counterpart to physical activities. Before action can be taken, online and real-world behaviour must be analysed to determine the level of threat. Huge data volumes mean that automated processes are required to attain an accurate understanding of risk. We describe the mathematical basis of technologies to analyse quotes in multiple languages. These include a Bayesian network to understand behavioural factors, state estimation algorithms for time series analysis, and machine learning algorithms for classification. We present results from studies of quotes in English, French, and Arabic, from anti-violence campaigners, politicians, extremists, and terrorists. The algorithms correctly identify extreme statements; and analysis at individual, group, and population levels detects both trends over time and sharp changes attributed to major geopolitical events. Group analysis shows that additional population characteristics can be determined, such as polarisation over particular issues and large-scale shifts in attitude. Finally, MP voting behaviour and statements from publicly-available records are analysed to determine the level of correlation between what people say and what they do.