A Socio-Cultural Geospatial Analysis and Modeling Framework in Support of Stability Operations and Infrastructure Applications
Project Description
An enhanced understanding of the cultural aspects that underlie tactical operations in hostile environments is inherently geospatial. Incidents (e.g., mortar attacks, IED explosions, riots) happen in specific locations and are not randomly distributed over space. Insight into why and where incidents are most likely to happen builds upon an understanding of the drivers of spatial (and space-time) pattern. This goes beyond a detection of pattern (e.g., the locations and/or time periods of hot spots or clusters) but relates the probability that an event occurs in any location and at any given point in time to observable socio-cultural and physical characteristics of the surrounding locations, in a quantifiable manner and with an indication of the uncertainty associated with the prediction.
A methodological and conceptual framework for geospatial analysis is proposed that relates the spatial event data to the characteristics of the physical and socio-economic context in order to explain the dynamics of events in function of changes in the surrounding context. This will provide the basis for a future methodological approach that moves from data exploration and pattern recognition to explanatory modeling and prediction. This project is envisaged consisting of a number of phases. Beyond the first phase of conceptual model development, three further one year phases are outlined for future work, in which the conceptual model is implemented through exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial regression modeling and modeling of space-time dynamics, accompanied by software development to support these analyses in an operational context.
ASU Project Staff
The project will be directed by Dr. Luc Anselin, who will supervise a post-doctoral research associate, the Research Advancement Administrator (Fatemah Dili), and two graduate research assistants. In addition, Dr. George Tita, a well known expert on the spatial analysis of gang violence, will serve as a consultant on the project, to aid in identifying relevant structural characteristics that may be transferred from the gang-related literature to the project at hand.
The post-doctoral research associate will assist in the review of the literature and development of the conceptual framework and will have extensive experience in spatial data analysis and point pattern analysis to be able to effectively contribute to the methodological development. The Research Advancement Administrator will provide overall project management. Specifically, her roles will consist of providing budget management, interfacing with students, and serving as a liaison between the School of Geographical Sciences and Office for Research and Sponsored Projects Administration at Arizona State University, as well as a liaison to the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory. The research assistants will help in collecting and reviewing literature and in carrying out a parallel analysis using data on gang violence in collaboration with the Mesa, AZ police department.
Funding
This project is funded by the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory under Agreement No. W9132T-08-2-0005, from February 2008 through September 2009.