Human trafficking is a global issue on a horrific scale, with an estimated 25 million victims across the globe each year.1 Trafficking is the recruitment and enslavement of people by fraud, force, or coercion. Yet as pervasive as human trafficking is, the criminals behind it are especially hard to find. Traffickers utilize numerous industries to mask their dark undercurrent of activity, with secret global networks spanning hospitality, transportation, banking, and more.
Technology
SAS Visual Investigator (Fraud Detection and Investigation on SAS Viya)
Fantastic use case. I'm familiar with text analytics and how natural language processing applies to AI. I've also at counter human trafficking at the international level in particular, and assisted other teams who were looking at social media/advertisement posts related to human trafficking. I'll be glad to pop into at least one of your meetings and provide some suggestions based on past work in this space.
I'm glad to hear that you're tackling this use case. It definitely can make a very positive impact by rescuing those being hurt and helping protect those at risk of being trafficked. @SABO_SAS and I have worked through some approaches of the intersection of analytics with investigative work which seems to be what you're looking to do. Our primary objective was to have the analytics generate a strategic analysis for broad patterns, trends, threats, etc. From there the analytics and data were fed to a tactical environment for investigators, analysts to do something about the problem or understand it at a deeper level. Like @SABO_SAS I'd be happy to provide some high-level guidance on the strategy, design, or technological aspects of this use case, specifically SAS Visual Investigator, if that would be helpful for you.
