Measuring the impact of coordination in disrupting illicit trafficking supply chains

Authors
Wilt, John
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Other Contributors
Sharkey, Thomas C.
Wallace, William A.
Szymanski, Boleslaw K.
Issue Date
2019-05
Keywords
Industrial Systems engineering
Degree
MEng
Terms of Use
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
This electronic version is a licensed copy owned by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Copyright of original work retained by author.
Full Citation
Abstract
In this thesis, an interdiction model is developed to assess the value of coordination in disrupting illicit trafficking supply chains, specifically large scale heroin networks. Coordination is a tool law enforcement and intelligence rely on to make informed and effective decisions in targeting transnational trafficking organizations. In this respect, it is important to assess which of various cooperative agreements (such as task forces) between law enforcement and intelligence agencies responsible for interdicting different segments of the illicit supply chain yield more a significant impact on interdiction efforts. This impact is assessed by measuring the improvement to the interdiction efforts that result from different levels of cooperation amongst agencies. An additional potential application of this thesis is to the disruption efforts of human trafficking networks, in which interaction and cooperation between potential interdiction agencies does not have significant precedence. The key findings include: (1) the most effective cooperative configuration for interdiction across multiple tiers consists of federal, state and municipal law enforcement, (2) full coordination between all agencies becomes particularly important as the network becomes less dense, finally (3) the impact of a particular coordinated environment more than doubles when you double the budget while the budgets are relatively small (2.5% and 5%).
Description
May 2019
School of Engineering
Department
Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Relationships
Rensselaer Theses and Dissertations Online Collection
Access
CC BY-NC-ND. Users may download and share copies with attribution in accordance with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. No commercial use or derivatives are permitted without the explicit approval of the author.