The Shifting Landscape: The Relationship of GEOINT and Human Geography
By Gwyneth Sutherlin, Ph.D.; William Chadsey; and Shannon C. Pankow
This article was originally published in USGIF’s State & Future of GEOINT Report 2017. Download the full report here.
In the GEOINT Community, we must not only strive to see our environment, but to sense it. In the past, this has meant developing new technologies such as radar to enhance imagery and support the monitoring of physical objects and features in order to halt large armies or plan maneuvers. Today, threat comes in a different form — from non-state actors that operate online and off, waves of migration, climate changes that drive conflict, and webs of cross-border trafficking that span continents. Human geography (HG) constructs have provided analysts with the technology and capability to sense this type of threat, beginning with the use of location to understand, anticipate, and more deeply analyze the patterns of behavior among people who live in a given area.
HG as a Foundational Analytic Approach
HG is not only a discipline; it is an approach to analysis. It provides analysts with an understanding of the physical geography and the networks among people who live in a particular region. By relating groups of people and their attributes to location, HG is no longer a layer, but can be considered foundational GEOINT. Primary attributes that describe the sociocultural context of the people in each location are ethnicity, religion, language, and social relationships. Social relationships form the fabric of a society and can vary between and within cultures to include tribal allegiances, criminal networks, or oligarchic structures. It is the relationship between locations, people, and these attributes that generate many of the most complex human patterns, such as identity, motivation, bias, allegiance, dialect, and radius of influence for prominent individuals. Our origin is a significant part of who we are. Our beliefs and behaviors are influenced by the history and events of that location. Perhaps it is the place we strive to protect, the site of an attack that prompts retaliation, or the origin of our family name that gives us standing in the community. Groups and locations have a connection, and GEOINT can capture it through HG.
Understanding who is in the location where you are operating is as vital as knowing the location itself. For this reason, more and more GEOINT Community members — from law enforcement to media to humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — are benefiting from HG methods, content, and technologies. Small satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) make it possible for humanitarian crisis responders and small organizations to link imagery with field data about human networks. Graph databases and cloud-based content make integrating relationships easy and fast. There is no longer a reason to separate data into layers. Relationships are the new model currency of GEOINT and HG represents the best manifestation of this currency. Using HG as a foundation to relate events from social media to radio towers, or roads to disease prevalence, makes physical data relevant to how human populations live, spend money, move, and react. HG provides analysts with an understanding of the relationship between the physical geography and the networks among people who live there so they can begin to sense relevant activities. A model that can leverage the full scope of HG will be able to meet the complex challenges the community faces with the State of GEOINT in 2017.
Human Geography and Gray Zone Conflict
Gray Zone activities exemplify the type of challenge for which HG is needed because they are inherently ambiguous and conducted through means that are difficult to detect. Gray Zone activities are defined as non-combat activities which have some level of aggression, occur between states or between states and non-states such as ISIL, and have a high level of ambiguity in terms of what policy or legal framework the activities fall under and how those activities are perceived and interpreted. Often performed alongside direct conflict,[1] Russian activities during the Cold War epitomized the Gray Zone challenge. Currently, Russia, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are pursuing agendas that bear similar marks. The HG GEOINT approach helps detect patterns to determine the effects of propaganda by connecting locations and actors. Using HG content situates ambiguous events or actors of unknown allegiance within a sociocultural network with attributes such as ethnicity, religion, language, and extended social relationships. The HG content serves as a foundation to begin exploring complex and uncertain Gray Zone activities that have evolved from or threaten to escalate to the overt conflict environment. The HG GEOINT approach provides analysts with a way to “map” Gray Zone activities and provide support in any counter measures.
HG and Violent Extremism
One of the most pernicious Gray Zone activities is the spread of propaganda, ideology, and even recruitment. Violent extremist organizations (VEOs) have been highly successful at exploiting social media to recruit across a variety of cultures and even orchestrate terrorist acts. The White House Executive Order (EO) “Developing an Integrated Global Engagement Center to Support Government-wide Counterterrorism Communications Activities Directed Abroad” created a strategic counterterrorism narrative to diminish the influence of VEOs abroad.[2] This EO further instructed how the messaging will involve partnership building to communicate a positive and resonant narrative. To achieve this goal means determining the VEO’s audience and influencers, locations, and intragroup content, as well as how to identify local partners connected to those audiences that can successfully counter message. GEOINT that leverages HG relationships can help link the online communication network to the offline geography of the members of that network so analysts can support the development of counter messaging. Understanding the content and the individuals in the networks comes from the context of location, which is why an HG GEOINT approach will be successful in supporting the counterterrorism messaging efforts.
A strong counter to violent extremism is development. Diminishing the “push” factors of poverty, poor governance, low levels of education, and poor access to health services increases security. To address these challenges requires the integration of sociocultural data with physical feature data. For example, using HG, development agencies and nonprofits can determine if the physical location of a planned school or food program will unfairly benefit a particular group because of the location. Similarly, for development projects in post-conflict regions, such as those planned for Iraq, HG is invaluable when determining which groups have a claim to which locations. This is vital to understand and prepare for resettlement of displaced persons and refugees as well as for vetting partnerships and hiring staff. Preference or bias to a group in one location could affect operations in a location far away due to social relationships. Cohesive planning will involve foundational GEOINT — HG.
HG Crosses Borders
It is the cross-border nature of many threats that makes GEOINT essential and foundational. For example, by adapting the historic Saharan trade routes between the Levant and West Africa, ISIL has connected terror cells such as the Tuareg in Northern Mali with ISIL in Syria to procure weapons, supplies, and income sources. There is an increase in drug traffic from West Africa into European markets, the proceeds of which are alleged to support ISIL activities. Illicit trafficking networks frequently take advantage of porous borders and instability of conflict environments to hide, and they offer a convenient network for VEOs to exploit. An HG approach can assist in understanding the locations and relationships among these overlapping networks to support their disruption. HG captures the global relationships among these groups and allows us to sense threats that are based in relationships and not otherwise visible to map. This approach allows analysts to contribute points of financial and resource disruption within ISIL’s network in order to help dismantle the terrorist organization.
Population flows across the geography, whether groups are fleeing conflict or seeking resources, thus the community is better prepared to meet the challenge by linking the groups to their geography. Such is the case for pandemic risk preparedness. The sources, onset, and spread of pandemics depend critically on sociocultural mores, psychosocial response, and messaging effectiveness. Recent examples, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, demonstrated that big data analytics cannot help in regions that do not produce data. “Unsafe burial practices were responsible for about half of new Ebola cases in some areas. We had to understand these traditions before we could persuade people to change them,” said Anthony Banbury, former United Nations (UN) Assistant Secretary General for Field Support.[3] Banbury persuaded the UN to hire their first anthropologist because he surmised that sociocultural knowledge of the location would provide more operational guidance than big data models. With early adoption of HG as foundational GEOINT for disaster preparedness, including pandemics, these sociocultural models would already have been in place to guide, filter, and alert critical issues such as this.
Tracking climate change and its effects on population movement provides data that can be used to combat cross-border trafficking of people for forced labor and the sex trade. We see these effects in countries such as Vietnam, where a multi-year drought and accompanying salinization of water sources and croplands has led to entire communities being forced to abandon their homes and fields. Able-bodied workers are enticed by fraudulent offers of work that entrap them in forced labor or slavery. The elderly, infirm, and young are left to fend for themselves, making them easy targets for human trafficking, especially young girls and boys.[4] By utilizing data related to population movement due to climate issues, HG analysis can be used to pinpoint areas most vulnerable to human trafficking to support law enforcement and anti-trafficking law and policy development.
Many GEOINT Communities Relate Through HG
The populations of dense urban environments called megacities most acutely feel climate crises. Using only satellite imagery, sensors, and technologies to monitor physical features like electrical grids and roads has proven difficult to analyze potential risks associated with these locations such as pandemics and terrorist networks that can easily blend into a non-traditional battlefield. GEOINT that approaches megacities as a web of relationships between infrastructure and the populations that occupy it provides richer operational information to understand subcultures, population pockets, and micro-networks to help analysts map and prepare for the unique risk set megacities present.
Another labyrinthine problem where a HG GEOINT approach is appropriate is wildlife trafficking. Countering this illicit trade has seen an increasing commitment and driven partnership across government, NGO, academic, and private organizations — thanks, in part, to the Obama Administration’s Presidential Task Force on the issue. The patterns of wildlife trafficking are similar to terrorist or criminal networks that smuggle illicit weapons, oil, drugs, or even humans. Routes take advantage of insecure or unstable regions, particularly those with porous borders.[5] Imagery alone cannot see these routes. For example, in China, the rise of rhino horn purchases is linked to the production of replicas of ancient carved cups held by emperors to signify wealth, which has taken on significance in China’s growing economy. The relationship between groups of people, the sociocultural driver of the illicit trade, and the locations can be combined in GEOINT with HG to coordinate law enforcement efforts, inform policy about where “road blocks” would be effective in the illicit network, and to disrupt the drivers of the trade.
Conclusion
Some might ask, is this approach really GEOINT and is it truly foundational? This skepticism comes from those who believe GEOINT should stay true to its roots and focus on imagery and terrain. However, the nature of the problems the GEOINT Community is challenged to support has changed. Each time the environment or situation demanded new methods and technologies, the community responded by providing a measure and means to sense that environment in order to prepare, plan, respond, and be resilient. In 2017, the GEOINT Community must continue to evolve by shifting HG into use as a foundational and wholly integrated approach rather than a peripheral layer. Using HG practices to integrate and relate GEOINT and other sources gives analysts the context and baselines necessary to understand different places and cultures, behaviors and motivations, and sense what cannot be seen — the constantly shifting sociocultural landscape.
[1] Philip Kapusta, “The Gray Zone.” Special Warfare 28, no. 4 (2015): 18–25. http://www.soc.mil/swcs/SWmag/archive/SW2804/October%202015%20Special%20Warfare.pdf.
[2] Barack Obama, (2016). Executive Order 13721: Developing an Integrated Global Engagement Center to Support Government-wide Counterterrorism Communications Activities Directed Abroad and Revoking Executive Order 13584 81, no. 2 (March 17, 2016): 146850. United States: Office of the Federal Register. https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=791347.
[3] Anthony Banbury,. “I love the UN, but It Is Failing.” The New York Times, online (March 20, 2016). http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/i-love-the-un-but-it-is-failing.html?_r=0
[4] TUOI TRE NEWS. “Drought Forces Vietnam’s Mekong Delta Residents to Leave Home, Family for Work. ” TUOI TRE NEWS, online (May 6, 2016). http://tuoitrenews.vn/34652/drought-forces-vietnams-mekong-delta-residents-to-leave-home-family-in-search-of-work.
(See also vnmission, “2016 Trafficking in Persons Report.” U.S. Embassy and Consulate, online (July 1, 2016). https://vn.usembassy.gov/2016-trafficking-persons-report-vietnam/.
[5] Jihan Seniora and Cédric Poitevin, Managing Land Borders and the Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons. Brussels, Belgium:
Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la sécurité (GRIP), 2010. http://www.poa-iss.org/KIT/2010-GRIP-Report-EN.pdf.
