Much has been made during the 2008 Presidential Campaign about the errors John McCain has made about geography. He made a reference to Czechoslovakia still existing and also said that the countries of Iraq and Pakistan border one another.

These are major world geography errors that McCain has been heavily criticized about, but he has been good about not making geographical errors about his own country. These errors belong to Barack Obama, the other candidate for President. Obama has on several occasions during the 08 Campaign made errors about geography throughout the U.S. including calling a city/state he was visiting by the wrong name. He has done this on three different occasions in Sunrise, FL, Sioux Falls, SD, and the state of Wyoming. He also was recorded saying that there were 57 states in the USA, that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than Illinois, and referred to Brownsville, Texas as Brownville, Texas. The map below shows the locations of where Obama has made Geographical Gaffes. The map can be found on Maker! at this link: Obama’s Geographical Gaffes, USA, 2008 Campaign.

These mistakes were probable mere slips of the tongues or occurred from being tired while campaigning. Not much should be made from the errors in my opinion, but since my work deals with geography I must say I’m a bit saddened.

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We’re wrapping up a great time at GEOINT this week, and wanted to share just a few short posts that caught our attention about the show. Sean Gillies gives his hilarious opinion of the GEOINT blog, while All Points Joe Francica shared a biting commentary for one vendor who denied him a picture. In all seriousness, it’s great that GEOINT has taken steps to be plugged in to social media through their blog, Twitter account and Facebook group. Although, it would have been nice to hear about the blog before the announcement on Tuesday so that people could connect online before the show.

Google Earth for the iPhone came out this week, and it’s pretty slick. A really cool feature is that Google Earth is available in offline mode through the iPhone and desktop by simply choosing to “continue without network”. It also remembers your cache, so any searches or locations you have viewed in the past will transfer between desktop and phone with or without internet connection.

Just in time for Halloween, Virender at Mibizaar posted a mashup with the creepiest places on earth. Bhangarh, India topped the list. Very Spatial listed some data of all the corn mazes in the country. Something fun for everyone!

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This is the final blog post in our eight part series on violence in Iraq and Afghanistan before and after the military surge. We have discussed our seven key findings in great detail and provided our in depth analysis and the raw data for our analysis on Both Finder! and Maker!. We welcome anyone else to use this data or any other data to continue to look into various aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. GIS Professionals, Neo-Geographers, and Spreadsheet Jockeys can all work together using publicly available data to do high-end analysis using GeoCommons, and we hope you do.

Here are abstracts of our key findings with links to the more detailed blog posts:

1. There has been a shift in violence from Iraq to Afghanistan. When all events of violence were tabulated there was a 13% increase in violence (attacks) in Afghanistan and 23% decrease in violence (attacks) in Iraq between the pre and post surge time periods. Blog Post Here.


2. When the total violence is examined, Afghanistan’s percentage share of violence has increased from 12% to 17% between the pre and post surge time periods. Blog Post Here

3. While there has been a shift in percent of change from Iraq to Afghanistan, the total violence in Afghanistan is dwarfed by Iraq. Since the surge, total violence in Iraq is equal to 5,465 attacks while Afghanistan’s is considerably less with 1,104 attacks. Blog Post Here

4. From the beginning of 2005 through to the end of the 1st quarter of 2008, the percentage of total attacks that were improvised explosive device (IED) related has increased by 13.19 % in Afghanistan, and 14.75% in Iraq. The pre-surge average for percentage of total attacks that were IED related in Afghanistan was 18.81% and 35.66% in Iraq. Post-surge averages show that 23.76% of attacks in Afghanistan were IED attacks and 41.59% of attacks in Iraq were IED attacks. Both countries are favoring IED attacks over other types, such as suicide bombing and assassinations. However, there has been a significant decrease in suicide bombings in Iraq since the surge but an increase in Afghanistan. This could indicate a move of more radical elements from Iraq to Afghanistan. Blog Post Here

5. From January of 2005 to March of 2008, there was a decrease in reported attacks on energy infrastructure by %70, although during the same time period the total number of attacks increased by %40. Blog Post Here

6. The overall trend of violence in Iraq has been moving gradually east towards the Iranian border. In Afghanistan there has been no consistent pattern or shift in violent attacks. Blog Post Here

7. Violent attacks in Iraq have been geographically concentrated and consistent over time, but attacks in Afghanistan are far more dispersed and locationally erratic. This could mean that the same strategy of hold and clear hostile territory by systematic progression, might not work in Afghanistan where attack patterns are not stable over time but spatially volatile. Blog Post Here

For Access to our public datasets in Finder! On Iraq, Click Here
For Access to our pulic datasets in Finder! on Afghanistan, Click Here
To view the maps that have been created on Iraq, Click Here
To view the maps that have been created on Afghanistan, Click Here

To get a sense of how attacks played out week by week, we used a time-stamped kml file in Google Earth. The change in the color of the points roughly indicates pre and post “surge” (early may 2007, in this case).

Check out the screen shots:

Attacks tend to concentrate in a few areas. In order to make sure all of them showed up, some points were pushed out just slightly from the point to which they were geocoded.

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Key Finding #7
Violent attacks in Iraq have been geographically concentrated and stable over time but are far more dispersed and locationally erratic in Afghanistan. The shape file, which was downloaded from Finder!, was used to run spatial statistics on the trends, particularly the distribution of the attacks in each country. To display and share the results, we exported shape files from ArcMap and then uploaded them into Finder! to then be displayed using Maker!.
The figures below show the spatial means of fatalities for Iraq and Afghanistan, calculated monthly, going back a year from March, 2008. Orange indicates fatalities from all violence and blue are fatalities from IED attacks. Spatial means show the spatial central tendency of a set of points weighted by a specific feature, in this case that is the average geographic center of attacks weighted by fatalities. A comparison of the means across different periods provides information on how the distribution of attacks may have shifted over time. The map of Iraq shows that the centrality of fatalities has remained relatively constant over the last year (the average locations are tightly clustered) with a few exceptions.

In Afghanistan, the spatial means for both fatalities and IED fatalities show more movement. The attack patterns in Afghanistan are far more erratic and geographically dispersed as shown in the map below.

Figure 16: Calculated Spatial Means in Iraq and Afghanistan

The map below also shows the spatial means, however, the size of the circles represent points in time: the largest circles are post-surge and the smaller ones are pre-surge attacks.

Figure 17 and 18: Calculated Spatial Means: Fatalities from Violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The map illustrates an outward movement of attacks. In Afghanistan, the population is located around the periphery of the country since the interior is mountaneous. In Iraq the map shows a much tighter clustering of attacks with a slight shift north since the surge. Spatial standard deviations for the monthly fatalities and IED fatalities were also calculated. These statistics indicates the degree of spatial dispersion of the attacks weighted by some feature such as the number of fatalities or number of wounded. On the chart, the higher standard deviation score indicates that attacks are more spatially dispersed. With the exception of October, 2007 in Afghanistan, the spatial variation of fatalities has remained relatively constant in both countries and in terms of both fatalities and IED-related fatalities. Although, in comparison to Afghanistan, fatalities have been more geographically concentrated in Iraq. The statistics show that attacks are roughly twice as dispersed in Afghanistan as in Iraq—again reinforcing the different pattern of attacks being seen in Afghanistan.

Figure 19: Spatial Standard Deviations: Iraq vs. Afghanistan

Another method for examining the data is to map the spatial standard deviation ellipses for each month in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On both maps the blue ellipses reflect total fatalities and the yellow reflect IED fatalities. In both countries, IED attacks show a similar pattern to the overall pattern of violent attacks in the region. Although in both cases IED attacks are slightly more concentrated than violent attacks in general.

Figure 20: Spatial Dispersion of Fatalities in Afghanistan

Figure 21: Spatial Dispersion of Fatalities in Iraq

The more narrow ellipses in Iraq illustrate that the attacks are more concentrated in a southeast to northwest direction. The wider ellipses in Afghanistan indicate more dispersion and are located in a southwest to northeast direction.

In conclusion, the analysis shows a much different pattern of attack in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Pundits have pointed to the clear and rebuild strategy, used successfully in Iraq, for reducing violence in Afghanistan. In Iraq “First, US and Iraqi security forces project into an area and provide initial security, then locals are recruited into auxiliary security forces, and reconstruction and aid projects quickly follow,which encourage the population to engage with security forces for a new tier of security.” This strategy was systematically used to secure neighborhoods, sometimes on a block by block basis. Since the geographic pattern of attacks in Iraq was very consistent, it makes sense that this strategy would work well. The areas of violence were well understood and could be rooted out in a systematic way. The evidence produced by the analysis of Afghani attacks shows that the same strategy would be challenging since attacks are dispersed and there is not a stable pattern of violence. This means forces could spend a large amount of time securing neighborhoods where there were no enemy forces or potentially future attacks. This could further alienate the local population.

Datasets:
Spatial Mean, Fatalities in Iraq
Spatial Mean, Fatalities in Afghanistan
Spatial Mean, Fatalities from IED attacks in Iraq
Spatial Mean, Fatalities from IED attacks in Afghanistan

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