A Methodology to Glean Demographics from Open Sources to Support Commanders in Unfamiliar Urban Areas

This paper details a method of using existing tools and practices that have long been exploited by marketing organizations to give commanders a rapid, holistic view of an unfamiliar urban neighborhood. A commander, as regarded in this paper, may be a military commander charged with securing a neighborhood in an area of conflict, or a civilian commander supporting a coalition disaster response effort. The paper first reviews the relevant demographics strategies as well as methods to automatically extract relevant socio-economic demographic variables and the strata resulting from their interaction from various datasets that are specifically created by, for, or about a cohort group. In order to minimize training and deployment requirements, we explore the use of iconic representation of aggregated demographic properties (i.e. higher-level concepts, such as middle class, resulting from the interaction of several demographic variables) as an overlay feature to maps. The paper will conclude with a discussion of how such a tool would enable the commander to use the available data in situation management, particularly in support of operations such as tailoring communications; assessing propensity of violence in a neighborhood; and quantifying the likelihood of encountering specific threats. While here we use Baghdad as a study case, the methodology is viable for any urban geographic area.