Finding the missing complex networks enable searches for missing people

Abstract

Across the world, hundreds of thousands of people go missing in connection with human rights violations, armed conflicts, other situations of violence, migration, and mass disasters. These disappearances cause incalculable suffering for their families and communities and are an obstacle to peace. Policymakers need better data and tools to objectively address disappearances and advance humanitarian objectives. Complex network analysis can be a powerful instrument for searching for and collecting relevant information on the missing in multiple contexts. Moreover, such approaches have the potential to highlight information that otherwise would not be evident.