Criminal networks analysis in missing data scenarios through graph distances.

Data collected in criminal investigations may suffer from: (i) incompleteness, due to the covert nature of criminal organisations; (ii) incorrectness, caused by either unintentional data collection errors and intentional deception by criminals; (iii) inconsistency, when the same information is collected into law enforcement databases multiple times, or in different formats. In this paper we analyse nine real criminal networks of different nature (i.e., Mafia networks, criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations) in order to quantify the impact of incomplete data and to determine which network type is most affected by it. The networks are firstly pruned following two specific methods: …