BMBF Projects
Piracy and Maritime Terrorism as a Challenge for Maritime Trade Security – Indicators, Perceptions and Options for Action
This 33-month project (April
2010 to December 2012), which is being
financed by
the German Federal Ministry of Education and
Research
(BMBF) to the tune of nearly one million
Euros, aims
to provide a forum in which representatives
of politics,
business and academia can exchange views and
share
knowledge on maritime trade security.
Building on
this, the project will examine and expand
the concept
of “Security Governance”. It will develop
indicators for evaluating specific risk
perceptions
as well as mechanisms for joint risk
analysis. It
will also draw up a catalogue of
non-military options
that will enable a co-ordinated response.
The project
seeks to bring together academic risk
analysis, technological
security solutions, and legal and economic
approaches
with the goal of developing
interdepartmental options
for action that will enable the state to
implement
non-military measures to strengthen maritime
trade
security – now and in the future.
The goal of the IFSH thereby is to refine
risk models
for security analysis, in order to identify
the level
of maritime insecurity and based on this, to
isolate
starting points for a coordinated approach
to effective
risk reduction. Furthermore, the IFSH will
analyse
and enhance coordination-processes between
relevant
key actors by making critical use of the
“Security
Governance” approach. As project
coordinator,
IFSH will organise all the meetings
necessary for
the merging of the sub-projects, maintain
the communication
platform and the website as well as take
over the
editorial tasks for jointpublications.
Researcher: Dr Hans-Georg Ehrhart, Dr Patricia Schneider, Kerstin Petretto
TERAS-INDEX
Terrorism and Radicalization – Indicators for Radicalization and the Impact of External Factors
The consortional project TERAS-INDEX (Terrorism and Radicalisation – Indicators for the Impact of External Factors) is financed by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and aims to comparatively analyse the internal effects of foreign and security policy measures of European countries. The focus is on the question “Do domestic and international conflicts in the Muslim world and the foreign policy of Germany and five comparable Eurpean countries towards them have an impact on Jihadist, Islamist and vulnerable Milieus in Germany and the other European countries, and how can this impact be described in meaningful indicators?”
Different methodological approaches will be applied, such as a comparative analysis of foreign and security policy possibly contributing to Islamist and Jihadist radicalisation in European countries, the elaboration of instruments for monitoring the feedback effects, the empirical identification of the radicalising effect in Jihadist, Islamist and vulnerable milieus, and a content analysis on the relevance of European countries' involvement in conflicts in the Muslim world in the radical narrative. The final aim of the project is to construct indicators, which will contribute to the early anticipation of waves of radicalisation waves and as such open windows of opportunity for early responses to this non-deterministic process.
Researcher: Dr. Matenia Sirseloudi, Dr. Martin Kahl