Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Africa: LRA Crisis Tracker
Excellent news, and this is great to see a resource like this. With so much focus on the other problems of the world, these animals continue to rove the jungles of Africa and terrorize and kill. There must be a more coordinated and serious effort to kill or capture Joseph Kony and his LRA.
The other thing with this is that if you look at the concentration of incidents (heat map), you can get a basic idea where the LRA operational area is. This is where a drone or satellite should be pointed, and a task force could be on call, just waiting to pounce on these guys as soon as movement or activity gets seen or reported.
Or how about we take every village that has ever been attacked by these scum in these areas, and do a massive lion hunt type operation? If you can flush the LRA out of their hiding spots, and set up ambushes or blocking forces to kill them, then that might be a good use of the thousands of people who would love to see their destruction. There is strength in numbers, and something like this would empower the people.
The other thing I like about this service is that data like this will help those who want to defend against the LRA. If you can see the main group moving closer to a village, then that village could be warned and the children and women could be hidden. Every little tip and report, is a vital piece to this game. The design of the website and service also reminds me a lot of Ushahidi. Check it out. –Matt
LRA Crisis Tracker
The LRA Crisis Tracker is a real-time mapping platform and data collection system created to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to the atrocities of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Using information sourced from Invisible Children’s Early Warning Radio Network, UN agencies, and local NGOs, this tool allows for better response from governments, policy-makers, and humanitarian organizations.
This joint project, developed by Invisible Children and Resolve, marks the first time data surrounding the crisis has been comprehensively aggregated and made publicly available.Website here.
LRA Crisis Tracker Introduction from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Technology: Libyan Rebels Using The Aeryon Scout UAV, Delivered By Zariba Security Corporation
This is cool. The rebels in Libya are using a Aeryon Scout UAV in their war. There is some great footage that they were able to capture with this UAV and definitely check it out. On a side note, it sounds like the PSC called the Zariba Security Corporation delivered the UAV to the rebels. Chalk up another instance of PSC’s on the ground in Libya.
Also, check this quote out from Aeryon’s website. Now that is a user friendly, simple to use UAV!
In cooperation with the Zariba Security Corporation and the Libyan Transitional National Council, Libyan tropps were trained in-country on the use of the Aeryon Scout UAV. Docking in the besieged city of Misrata, after an 18-hour boat ride from Malta, a representative from Zariba Security delivered and conducted Scout UAV training. With enemy artillery landing nearby and rockets still falling on the city, training began at the Misrata Airport. “After only one demonstration flight, the TNC soldiers operated the following flight,” said Charles Barlow of Zariba. “I was amazed how easy it was to train people with no previous UAV or aircraft experience, especially given the language barrier. Soldiers need tough, intuitive equipment – and the Scout delivered brilliantly.”
Which brings up a great idea with weapons development. I mentioned the Fisher Price AK 47 in the past, and I really like the concept of simple to use, but extremely durable battlefield tools. I would imagine that this UAV can also be viewed using iPhones or similar smart phones? If so, then rebels could show one another very easily what they are seeing with a quick playback or if they were all networked, so that everyone can know the placements of enemies. Very interesting, and I am sure this will add another chapter to Guerrilla Warfare manuals everywhere. –Matt
Edit: 08/23/2011- It was brought to my attention that the Libyan rebels had paid for this UAV, and it was not donated like I originally posted. A source for this would be Wired’s Danger Room and they were able to talk with the players involved. Supposedly the drones are worth about $100,000 to $150,000. The Globe and Mail reported as well. I have no idea how much Zariba’s services cost, or if that was included in the price. Maybe the rebels will pay for NATO and all of the bombs they dropped as well? lol
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Building Snowmobiles: Predictive Policing… Predictive Warfighting?
In the program’s first three weeks, the model has proven to be 71 percent accurate in predicting the place and day where crimes have occurred, said Deputy Chief Steve Clark. In other words, 71 percent of the time the model told an officer to be at a location, a crime was in progress or was reported.
At least one person has been arrested because of a patrol check initiated by the system, he said.
Police recently gave eight years of crime reports for residential burglaries, vehicle burglaries and vehicle thefts to an applied mathematics professor at Santa Clara University. The system essentially maps the time, location and recurrence of past crimes to help police predict crime and tailor their patrols.–Santa Cruz police have success with predictive policing
For this building snowmobiles post, I wanted to draw upon a new crime fighting technology and explore the idea of it’s possible uses. The idea here is to use predictive analysis, much like what retailers use for product research or what researchers use for earthquake prediction, and use it to predict where crime is most likely to happen to get resources to efficiently cover those areas via patrols.
So the question I ask is if this actually works for crime, then why not apply it to warfighting? And especially COIN and today’s conflicts, where the war is long and there is time to collect statistics of attacks and instances that would be needed to build such a model? Or how about for anti-piracy or for the drug war down in Mexico? The key is if you have statics over the course of several years, then a model could be made. And if war planners are wanting to use their resources more efficiently because they have less forces to use, or the host nation is limited in resources, then predictive warfighting might help with the more efficient use of manpower on the battlefield.
If anything, much like with policing, it will be the guy on the ground who patrols their areas daily that will have the intuition of where to go and how best to cover their AO’s. But what about units that cycle in and out of the battlefields? Where is their intuition coming from if they have never been to that AO? So predictive analysis might help in the transition periods and help build that intuition of the new forces. This predictive analysis will also make it easier to make judgements about setting up patrols. You could combine human intuition/experience/orientation with this predictive analysis, and make a better plan of operations.
Predictive policing also helps the COIN forces by efficiently guiding the local police forces to areas they need to be. With places like Afghanistan, you might have officers who do not want to go in certain areas or dwell more in certain areas than they should, or are not trained enough to recognize patterns, or they come from other parts of the country. They too could benefit from this predictive analysis to further reinforce their intuition. But it could also help determine if that police force is working efficiently.
The fear though is depending upon this predictive analysis entirely. To me it is an interesting tool that needs to be tested more to see where it can be most effective, or where it could fit in to the overall strategy for crime fighting or warfighting. Interesting stuff and definitely check out all of the articles and information posted below if you would like to read more about it.
On a final note, Santa Cruz and other police departments throughout the nation looked at this new system as a way to more efficiently use their police forces to deal with crime. But they were also looking at it because of economic reasons because there is less money available to fund police departments these days. So more and more departments will be looking at cost cutting measures, while still being able to ‘protect and serve’ their communities. So what say you? –Matt
#60: Fighting Crime With Mathematics
12.16.2010
By Daniel Lametti
One major problem in crime-fighting is that a police crackdown in one neighborhood may simply push criminal behavior into a nearby area. In March two mathematicians, working with an anthropologist and a criminologist, announced a way to quantify this reaction (pdf).
“Crimes tend to cluster together in space and time, forming hot spots,” says UCLA mathematician Martin Short, the study’s lead author. Drawing on real-world data, his team developed a model showing that hot spots come in two varieties. One type forms when an area experiences a large-scale crime increase, such as when a park is overrun by drug dealers. Another develops when a small number of criminals—say, a pair of burglars—go on a localized crime spree.
The model suggests that a focused police response can relatively easily extinguish larger hot spots because the criminals there scatter randomly, making it unlikely that they will resume coordinated unlawful activity nearby. But for smaller crime waves, crooks just migrate together into an adjacent neighborhood, where they are likely to start another spree. By analyzing police reports as they come in, Short hopes to determine which type of hot spot is forming so police can handle it more effectively.
Link to Discover article here.
—————————————————————-
UC MaSC Project
Funded by the Human Social Dynamics Program at NSF, the UC MaSC Project centers on theoretical, methodological and empirical work to develop analytical and computational models of crime pattern formation. Crime mapping forms a key feature of current approaches to understanding offender behavior and is a tool used increasingly by police departments and policy makers for strategic crime prevention. However, despite the availability of sophisticated digital mapping and analysis tools there is a substantial gap in our understanding of how low-level behaviors of offenders lead to aggregate crime patterns such as crime hot spots. Thus, for example, we are unable to specify exactly why directed police action at crime hot spots sometimes leads to displacement of crime in space but, surprisingly, often can also lead to hot spot dissipation and a real reduction in crime incidences.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Mobile Apps: Tactical NAV Smartphone App Directs UAV–Thwarts Taliban Attack
Excellent little story, although I would like to hear it from the security contractors involved. There is no mention of the company either. So whomever was involved, if you would like to confirm this here on the blog or talk to me in private, I can make the edits to show this actually happened.
The concept of the app is great and it would be nice to get some more details about this incident. Like how the contractor found out about the Tac NAV, and did it work as advertised? It sounded like he was able to communicate the needed information for this incident, and get a UAV over the attacking force.
On the other hand though, did the Taliban run because of the UAV, or were they only conducting a ‘hit and run’ attack and they happened to be gone when the UAV arrived on scene? That is why I would like to get a little more detail before cheering this mobile app on.
Cool stuff though, and if you have a smartphone this would be a good mobile app to have, just because it doesn’t weigh anything and you can store it indefinitely on your phone. –Matt
Tactical NAV Smartphone App Directs UAV – Thwarts Taliban Attack
Jul 21, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan – With the number of private military contractors exceeding the number of troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a growing concern for keeping contractors safe is more pressing than ever. ?On June 28, a private contractor located near Kabul came under insurgent fire while located in an area where he and his American contractors were working. The contractor immediately called the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) tactical operations center (TOC) for military support, and ISAF personnel then quickly responded by requesting the military grid reference system (MGRS) grid coordinates to the insurgent threat.?However, the contractor was not equipped with a military GPS device or a 1:50,000-scale map to give the proper MGRS coordinates to the TOC. Instead, the contractor used Tactical NAV on his iPhone, and was able to quickly and accurately provide the assisting military personnel with his location, and also the location where the insurgent fire was coming from. As a result, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was dispatched to survey the perimeter of the base, and the insurgent attack was thwarted.?Developed for Soldiers by Soldiers, Tactical NAV assists troops in mapping, plotting and photographing waypoints on the battlefield and also helps Soldiers convey coordinates to other supporting units. Tactical NAV incorporates a compass, camera and a gridded map reference system to accurately pinpoint specific locations and relay that information to other users.Device Requirements:-iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad-Requires iOS 4.2 or later-5.9
Story here.