IED Attacks in Iraq

Is the U.S. winning the war in Iraq? The Bush Administration continues to say yes. Most recently, they are touting a drop in U.S. fatalities in Iraq, stating that American deaths in the war-torn country in July were at their lowest levels since last November and sectarian violence (ignoring the horrific massacre of last Tuesday) has declined.

Others are more skeptical. Some point out that car and truck bombings are not included in the administration’s tabulations of violence in Iraq and therefore, the reports coming out of the government show inflated success. There also concerns about the proliferated use of Improvised Explosive Devices(IEDs) by insurgents, and the toll they are having on U.S. troups and other innocent people in Iraq.

Wikipedia defines an IED as a “device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals and designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass, or distract. It may incorporate military stores, but is normally devised from nonmilitary components.” Typically, they are cobbled together using a hodgepodge of everyday gadgets, such as remote controls, mobile phones, pagers and garage door openers. Despite their often benign appearance, the impact of a detonated IED can be very powerful and deadly.

The statistics on IED attacks in Iraq illuminate the extent of the problem.

Newsweek reports that in 2004 roughly 1 in 3 soldiers was affected by IED attacks; Now, the numbers are 4 out of 5.

Time Magazine states that 48.5 of all U.S. fatalities in Iraq have resulted from IEDs

The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count has an interesting graphic on their website highlighting the steady climb in IED attacks against coalition forces following the fall of Saddam.

And there are numerous accounts reported in the news nearly everyday of Iraqis as victims of the deadly device.

Mapping the Changing IED Terror Landscape

So, where are IED attacks being carried out and how has this landscape changed over time? To answer this question, three heat maps were generated showing concentrations of IED attacks in Iraq for the years: 2004, 2005 and 2006. The data was extracted from the National Counter Terrorism Center World Wide Incident Tracking database and includes attacks against all nationalities; not, just Americans.

2004 IED Attacks

2005 IED Attacks

2006 IED Attacks

The graphics are revealing. In 2004 and 2005 attacks were fairly concentrated, occurring largely in the metropolitan area of Baghad and points north; the brightest spots on the views highlight these hotspots. Over time, the attacks show a mestastisizing pattern: a diffusion of attacks pushing further and filling in north and south of Baghad.

What Does the Future Hold? Pentagon officials say they have spent 6 billion dollars in trying to combat IEDs and new technologies are being deployed in the field to thwart attacks. It will be interesting to see if at years end, with 2007 data mapped, whether these efforts can help to quell the problem or if the problem continues to fester.

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Lockheed Martin and FortiusOne have inked a deal that allows Lockheed to be an exclusive distributor of FortiusOne technology to the federal sector. From the press release:

Under the agreement, Lockheed Martin will have the exclusive marketing rights for FortiusOne’s products to intelligence, defense and homeland security customers. Lockheed Martin will also integrate the company’s products into existing and future programs.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with FortiusOne,” said Mike Thomas, president of Global Security Solutions at Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services. “FortiusOne’s innovative products will enhance our ability to provide geospatially enabled solutions to our customers.”

Popularity: 3% [?]

Andrew Turner has a great series of blog posts on the future of KML that were the product of meetings at the OGC on the topic a week or so ago. Lots of interesting content in Andrew’s series, but the one most near and dear to us is the discussion on metadata. Chris made it out to the meeting with Andrew to throw our 2 cents into the discussion, and convey Chris’s thoughts on the schema tag and how attributed data can be embedded into it. We should not confuse adding attribute data to KML to adding metadata to KML as Sean Gillies points out in response to Andrew’s post. Both are important but serve two different and distinct functions.

Our use of the schema tag is to allow additional data to be added to KML to describe a location on the map. Natively KML supports the ability to add a description and Z coordinate to a location. So, you can describe a push pin with text, HTML and/or a picture then add a Z coordinate that provides a metric to that push pin. This allows you to do many things and has created a lot of great KML, but there are limits. Namely you can only really add two attributes – a description and a metric. Lots of locations descriptions and data in general is multi dimensional.

Lets take a simple example of one of the first Google “My Maps” mashups of the 2004 US Presidential Election. The election mashup is a nice thematic map of Bush (red states) versus Kerry votes (blue states), and when you click on a state it shows you the percent of votes for each candidate. The data on the percentage of votes for Bush and Kerry is placed in the description field of the KML requiring the user to color code each state to create the thematic map. This is quite a bit of work since your are using a qualitative data field to try and do something quantitative.

This is something we would like to change, by making it a lot easier for anyone to create KML that easily handles quantitative data. The geoweb, to date, has done a great job of opening up mapping by allowing anyone to create a qualitative description (text, HTML, pictures) of a location. This is what KML is currently geared to support, but there are an increasing number of people that would like to expand quantitative data beyond a single Z attribute.

In his post Andrew pointed to our use of the schema tag to enable thematic mapping, and that is accurate, but only the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. Once you have access to multiple data descriptors about a location it enables a range of decision making tools. KML currently reflects the “read – write” functionality of Web 2.0, but in order to evolve to a “read-write-execute” web it will need the ability to support quantitative functions that allows users to be enabled by decision support.

Since things are always clearer with examples and our favorite example is finding bars and single (men/women) let me give it a shot. Currently we would search for bars and get back KML that describes the bar – name, address, user comments, maybe a user rating. The KML and current applications cover this very well – we can “read” and “write” back to the KML – very Web 2.0. What is missing is any analysis of those bars that tell me the best one to go to.

Lets say the application already knows a few things about me – I am a 33 years old, single, male, work in IT, and I am a Taurus. This information and much more could be easily picked up from a social network profile like Facebook or MySpace. If I now did a search on bars and the KML had embedded feature attribute data for the bars and the surrounding contextual data I could be directed to the bars that had the highest correlation with women that are single, in an adjacent age bracket, and work in IT. If I had a good experience at the bar I could post back my comment to the bar further reinforcing that quantitative correlation with user generated validation. Now my KML has enabled a “read-write-execute” application that is both qualitative and quantitative. That I believe is the long term value proposition for KML 3.0.

Popularity: 18% [?]

With just over 450 days left to elect a new President and another 70 plus to his/her inauguration; the recent turn of events can’t be all that encouraging for conservatives who care deeply about which party controls the three branches of the government.

It would seem, having control of executive branch for last six and half years and the rightward tilt of Supreme Court might ease their anxious minds. Instead the causes for worries have multiplied since Democrats took control of the congress last year.

For example, its entirely within the realm of possibilities that Democrats may still be in control of legislative branch after the next General election and election of a Democrat as the 44th President can’t be ruled out either. Add to such litany the disappointing facts such as, President’s dismal approval ratings mired in mid to lower 30s, a very unpopular war, energized Democratic base and record breaking funds raised by Democratic presidential contenders.

Although not as alarming as the possible loss of executive and legislative branches, the recent announcement by the 4th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Wilkins of taking senior-status after another such announcement not so long ago by Judge Widener and departure last year of Judge Luttig to private sector has created a sense of uncertainty.
The control of what was once a solidly conservative court of the land is now in balance between liberal and conservative judges.

Already many of Bush’s nominees are bottled up in the Judicial committee’s nomination process. A recess appointment may temporarily avert what might be an inevitable takeover by the liberal wing.

So how does the current landscape of judicial vacancies look? Below is a map showing the number of vacancies both at the Appeals and the District court levels in the lower 48. There are total of 50 vacancies, 34 in the Circuit Courts and 16 in the District Courts. The hotspot over Richmond (the 4th Circuit Appeals Court ) displays the number of vacancies. Click here for a detailed list.

Spatial distribution of Judicial Vacancies: August, 2007

Compare this with judicial vacancies at about the same time period during President Clinton’s 2nd term. There were total of 65 vacancies, (23 in Circuit courts; 41 in District Courts) and total of 41 nominations were pending. Pennsylvania’s Eastern district led the number of vacancies with 8, followed by 9th Circuit in Pasadena at 7. In fact Clinton administration faced judicial vacancies in nearly every District and Circuit Appeals Courts. That picture didn’t improve. In fact, towards the end of President Clinton’s 2nd term, on Jan 04, 2001, the total number of vacancies had gone up to 80 (Court of Appeals had 26 and 54 in District Courts) with 8 nominations still pending.

Spatial distribution of Judicial vacancies: August 1999

Will the current administration face similar fate? Its possible, however, let’s not forget that the President still has the bully pulpit! Especially in times of war, the President gets the last word!

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