Challenges of measuring progress in Afghanistan using violence trends: the effects of aggregation,military operations,seasonality, weather,and other causal factors |
| |
Authors: | Eric Gons Jonathan Schroden Ryan McAlinden Marcus Gaul Bret Van Poppel |
| |
Institution: | 1. Headquarters Air Combat Command , 204 Dodd Boulevard, Suite 304, Langley AFB , VA , 23665 , USA;2. Center for Naval Analyses , 4825 Mark Center Drive, Alexandria , VA , 22311 , USA;3. NATO C3 Agency , Oude Waalsdorperweg 61, 2597 , AK , The Hague , The Netherlands;4. Afghan Assessment Group , Headquarters International Security Assistance Force , Kabul , Afghanistan;5. Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering , US Military Academy , West Point , NY , 10996 , USA |
| |
Abstract: | Measuring nationwide progress of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan using violence trends is difficult due to several factors: aggregation of data to the national level may obfuscate disparate local trends; the observed seasonality in violence makes comparisons difficult and may obscure progress; and short-term spikes or troughs – attributable to weather, military operations and tempo, or holiday periods – heavily influence simple averaging schemes. Despite these challenges, proper understanding of violence statistics is critical to estimating the effectiveness of military forces added during a surge or redeployed as part of transition. This article explores methods for analyzing observed violence trends to identify causal factors, to provide a comparable baseline, and to inform assessments at appropriate levels of aggregation. One methodology for seasonal adjustment of violence data is discussed and shown to provide a logical baseline for examining trends. An ordinary least squares regression model is developed and implemented using time-series violence data. |
| |
Keywords: | campaign assessment counterinsurgency metrics Afghanistan trend analysis seasonality |
|
|