Researchers have learned to use masses of WikiLeaks data to predict where violence will break out

In August 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of classified documents that catalogued the harsh realities of the war in Afghanistan, a group of friends - all computer experts - gathered at the New York headquarters of the internet company Bitly to make sense of the data.

Researchers have learned to use masses of WikiLeaks data to predict where violence will break out Arthow20cold620x349

The programmers used simple code to extract dates and locations from about 77,000 incident reports that detailed everything from stop-and-search operations to battles.

The resulting map revealed the outlines of the country's ongoing violence: hot spots near the Pakistani border but not near the Iranian border, and extensive bloodshed along the country's main highway. They did it all in just one night.

Now one member of that group has teamed up with mathematicians and computer scientists and taken the project a step further: they have used the data to predict the future.
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Based solely on written reports of violence from 2004 to 2009, the researchers built a model that was able to foresee which provinces would experience more violence in 2010 and which would have less. They could also anticipate how much violence increased or decreased.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/how-cold-hard-numbers-can-be-used-to-foretell-the-battle-20120718-22ay7.html#ixzz212H8xSKs

Researchers have learned to use masses of WikiLeaks data to predict where violence will break out

Researchers have learned to use masses of WikiLeaks data to predict where violence will break out

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