Africa Knowledge, Data Source, and Analytic Effort (KDAE) Exploration

The TRADOC Analysis Center (TRAC), Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), and other Department of Defense (DoD) organizations are currently conducting large data capture and analysis efforts on areas all around the world. As efforts in the US Central Command (CENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR), particularly in both Iraq and Afghanistan draw down, many senior decision makers expect that the US African Command (AFRICOM) AOR will be the focus of future efforts in the coming years. This project will first build an assessment framework focused on the AFRICOM AOR identifying what data we would ideally like to gather and measure in a COIN environment, and then by actually gathering the data points from a multitude of sources we can identify gaps in the available data. Concurrently, this effort will develop the necessary software within the DaViTo (Data Visualization Tool), an open source, government owned exploratory data analysis tool, in order to allow the end user to construct an assessment framework utilizing a customized weighting scheme along with the ability to display results. Finally, this project will develop a scenario methodology and a small Proof of Principle use case in Nigeria by conducting factor analysis of survey data and will use Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) in order to predict future issue stance scores and observed attitudes and behaviors of the population that will directly support TRAC’s Irregular Warfare Tactical Wargame (IW TWG).