Hey Joe !

Quote Originally Posted by redbullets View Post
Thanks. The purpose of the study is to actually examine this and figure out what, if anything can be added to/extracted from MRE and other types of awareness campaigns to reduce exposure, in addition to pushing the increased public health impacts of victimization. I'm not aware of anyone in the humanitarian community who's done a serious study of the targeting around civilians in high-threat countries to illuminate trends such as target locations, time(s) of day, groups being singled out, etc. We do that in our own way in the Humanitarian Mine Action arena, but tools such as IMSMA do not support this in an IED context for reasons that include what you said above - landmines/UXO are static, and IEDs are active. That's a major theme and discussion I've included in the proposal I'm finishing.
Glad you brought up IMSMA’s applications and inherent shortcomings when dealing with what Estonia considers ‘other aspects of Demining and UXO clearance’. More often than not, UXO are the lifeblood of our IED builders (our criminals scoop out the HE and sell the metal – a bit more refined and business savvy than their Iraqi brethren).

Because Estonia’s structure here includes typical law enforcement duties (sweeps and post blast to name a few), we deal with both UXO and IED threats. We decided long ago to tailor the IMSMA platform to meet our needs in both arenas. That is, the trends you mention above. We have yet to ‘master’ the system, but what we do have in our DB helped us catch our last mad bomber. Granted, Estonia is far smaller than Iraq and Afghanistan, and the criminals far fewer.

Regards, Stan