Strategies and Tactics in Armed Conflict: How Governments and Foreign Interveners Respond to Insurgent Threats

We introduce a new data set on the strategies and tactics employed by belligerents in 197 internal armed conflicts that occurred between 1945 and 2013. The Strategies and Tactics in Armed Conflict (STAC) data set provides scholars with a rich new source of information to facilitate investigations of how regimes and their foreign supporters have responded to insurgent threats and the effects of actors’ force employment choices on a wide variety of intra- and postconflict outcomes. In addition to seventeen novel variables that measure the strategies and tactics employed by governments and intervening states, the STAC data set contains independently coded measures of many variables that overlap with existing data sets—a feature that facilitates the replication of existing studies and robustness checks on the results of new studies. We demonstrate the utility of the STAC data with an analysis of the impact of rebel mobilization on the basis of ethnicity on the propensity of governments to employ forced resettlement, civilian protection, civilian welfare projects, and civilian targeting to counter the insurgent threat.

Download Full-text

Examining the Use of Amnesties and Pardons as a Response to Internal Armed Conflict

Israel Law Review ◽

10.1017/s0021223713000290 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 133-147 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Andrew G Reiter

Keyword(s):

Transitional Justice ◽

Armed Conflict ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

Armed Groups ◽

Internal Armed Conflict ◽

The Past ◽

Peace And Security ◽

Lasting Peace ◽

The Impact ◽

Internal Armed Conflicts

The use of amnesty for human rights violations has been heavily criticised on legal, ethical and political grounds. Yet amnesties have been the most popular transitional justice mechanisms over the past four decades, particularly in the context of internal armed conflict. States justify these amnesties by claiming they are important tools to secure peace. But how successful is amnesty in accomplishing these goals? This article seeks to answer this question by analysing the use and effectiveness of 236 amnesties used in internal armed conflicts worldwide since 1970. The article first creates a typology of the use of amnesty in the context of internal armed conflict. It then qualitatively examines the impact on peace of each type of amnesty. The article finds that most amnesties granted in the context of internal armed conflict have no demonstrable impact on peace and security. Yet amnesties granted as carrots to entice the surrender of armed actors occasionally succeed in bringing about the demobilisation of individual combatants or even entire armed groups. More importantly, amnesties extended as part of a peace process are effective in initiating negotiations, securing agreements, and building the foundation for long-lasting peace.

Download Full-text

Investigating the impact of pre-processing techniques and pre-trained word embeddings in detecting Arabic health information on social media

Journal Of Big Data ◽

10.1186/s40537-021-00488-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Yahya Albalawi ◽

Jim Buckley ◽

Nikola S. Nikolov

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Deep Learning ◽

Comprehensive Evaluation ◽

Classification Problem ◽

Data Sets ◽

Word Embeddings ◽

Data Set ◽

Lower Accuracy ◽

Health Related ◽

The Impact

AbstractThis paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of data pre-processing and word embedding techniques in the context of Arabic document classification in the domain of health-related communication on social media. We evaluate 26 text pre-processings applied to Arabic tweets within the process of training a classifier to identify health-related tweets. For this task we use the (traditional) machine learning classifiers KNN, SVM, Multinomial NB and Logistic Regression. Furthermore, we report experimental results with the deep learning architectures BLSTM and CNN for the same text classification problem. Since word embeddings are more typically used as the input layer in deep networks, in the deep learning experiments we evaluate several state-of-the-art pre-trained word embeddings with the same text pre-processing applied. To achieve these goals, we use two data sets: one for both training and testing, and another for testing the generality of our models only. Our results point to the conclusion that only four out of the 26 pre-processings improve the classification accuracy significantly. For the first data set of Arabic tweets, we found that Mazajak CBOW pre-trained word embeddings as the input to a BLSTM deep network led to the most accurate classifier with F1 score of 89.7%. For the second data set, Mazajak Skip-Gram pre-trained word embeddings as the input to BLSTM led to the most accurate model with F1 score of 75.2% and accuracy of 90.7% compared to F1 score of 90.8% achieved by Mazajak CBOW for the same architecture but with lower accuracy of 70.89%. Our results also show that the performance of the best of the traditional classifier we trained is comparable to the deep learning methods on the first dataset, but significantly worse on the second dataset.

Download Full-text

The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) sounding network: operations, processing and analysis

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques ◽

10.5194/amt-8-421-2015 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 421-434 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

M. P. Jensen ◽

T. Toto ◽

D. Troyan ◽

P. E. Ciesielski ◽

D. Holdridge ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Scale Model ◽

Data Sets ◽

Central Plains ◽

Data Set ◽

Convective Systems ◽

Convective Clouds ◽

Quality Checks ◽

Network Operations ◽

The Impact

Abstract. The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) took place during the spring of 2011 centered in north-central Oklahoma, USA. The main goal of this field campaign was to capture the dynamical and microphysical characteristics of precipitating convective systems in the US Central Plains. A major component of the campaign was a six-site radiosonde array designed to capture the large-scale variability of the atmospheric state with the intent of deriving model forcing data sets. Over the course of the 46-day MC3E campaign, a total of 1362 radiosondes were launched from the enhanced sonde network. This manuscript provides details on the instrumentation used as part of the sounding array, the data processing activities including quality checks and humidity bias corrections and an analysis of the impacts of bias correction and algorithm assumptions on the determination of convective levels and indices. It is found that corrections for known radiosonde humidity biases and assumptions regarding the characteristics of the surface convective parcel result in significant differences in the derived values of convective levels and indices in many soundings. In addition, the impact of including the humidity corrections and quality controls on the thermodynamic profiles that are used in the derivation of a large-scale model forcing data set are investigated. The results show a significant impact on the derived large-scale vertical velocity field illustrating the importance of addressing these humidity biases.

Download Full-text

Improving SAR Altimeter processing over the coastal zone and inland waters - the ESA HYDROCOASTAL project

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

David Cotton ◽

Keyword(s):

Coastal Zone ◽

Test Data ◽

River Discharge ◽

Altimeter Data ◽

Inland Waters ◽

Data Sets ◽

Data Set ◽

Discharge Data ◽

Processing Algorithms ◽

The Impact

IntroductionHYDROCOASTAL is a two year project funded by ESA, with the objective to maximise exploitation of SAR and SARin altimeter measurements in the coastal zone and inland waters, by evaluating and implementing new approaches to process SAR and SARin data from CryoSat-2, and SAR altimeter data from Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B. Optical data from Sentinel-2 MSI and Sentinel-3 OLCI instruments will also be used in generating River Discharge products.New SAR and SARin processing algorithms for the coastal zone and inland waters will be developed and implemented and evaluated through an initial Test Data Set for selected regions. From the results of this evaluation a processing scheme will be implemented to generate global coastal zone and river discharge data sets.A series of case studies will assess these products in terms of their scientific impacts.All the produced data sets will be available on request to external researchers, and full descriptions of the processing algorithms will be provided&#160;ObjectivesThe scientific objectives of HYDROCOASTAL are to enhance our understanding&#160; of interactions between the inland water and coastal zone, between the coastal zone and the open ocean, and the small scale processes that govern these interactions. Also the project aims to improve our capability to characterize the variation at different time scales of inland water storage, exchanges with the ocean and the impact on regional sea-level changesThe technical objectives are to develop and evaluate&#160; new SAR&#160; and SARin altimetry processing techniques in support of the scientific objectives, including stack processing, and filtering, and retracking. Also an improved Wet Troposphere Correction will be developed and evaluated.Project&#160; OutlineThere are four tasks to the project<ul><li>Scientific Review and Requirements Consolidation: Review the current state of the art in SAR and SARin altimeter data processing as applied to the coastal zone and to inland waters</li> <li>Implementation and Validation: New processing algorithms with be implemented to generate a Test Data sets, which will be validated against models, in-situ data, and other satellite data sets. Selected algorithms will then be used to generate global coastal zone and river discharge data sets</li> <li>Impacts Assessment: The impact of these global products will be assess in a series of Case Studies</li> <li>Outreach and Roadmap: Outreach material will be prepared and distributed to engage with the wider scientific community and provide recommendations for development of future missions and future research.</li> </ul>&#160;PresentationThe presentation will provide an overview to the project, present the different SAR altimeter processing algorithms that are being evaluated in the first phase of the project, and early results from the evaluation of the initial test data set.&#160;

Download Full-text

Armed conflicts as a source of new formations in the Russian language (on material of the armed conflict in Donbass)

The Journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Series "Philology" ◽

10.26565/2227-1864-2020-87-09 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Armed Conflict ◽

Hate Speech ◽

Word Formation ◽

Russian Language ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

The South ◽

New Interpretation ◽

The Military ◽

The Impact ◽

The Russian Language

The vocabulary of a language is a variable quantity, it is constantly changing, responding to the needs of life and reflecting its new realities. The events taking place in the South-East of Ukraine since March 2014 have significantly changed the usual picture of the world of the parties involved in this conflict, led to a new interpretation of reality, the emergence of new mental constructs, objectified in the language using a number of lexical innovations, most of which fall under the definition of „hate speech”. The purpose of this article is to try to examine the impact of the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine on the emergence of lexical innovations in the Russian language, to identify ways of forming new units and their main thematic clusters. The material for the work was neoplasms recorded in electronic Russian and Russian-speaking Ukrainian mass media, as well as selected from social networks and videos. The analysis showed that in the context of the armed conflict in the South-East of Ukraine, the characteristic manifestations of „hate speech” are mainly numerous new categories-labels with a pronounced conflict potential. The priority in this regard is offensive and derogatory nominations of representatives of the opposite camp, taking into account their worldview / ideological, national / ethnic, territorial / regional characteristics. The military jargon has also undergone a significant update, incorporating not only the reactualized slangisms of the era of the Afghan campaign of 1979-89, but also lexical innovations caused by the military and political realities of the current armed conflict in the Donbas. Neologisms are formed in accordance with the existing methods in the Russian language (word formation, semantic derivation, borrowing). At the same time, non-standard word-forming techniques are also used (language play, homophony, etc.).

Download Full-text

The Impact of Armed Conflict on the Epidemiological Situation of COVID-19 in Libya, Syria and Yemen

Frontiers in Public Health ◽

10.3389/fpubh.2021.667364 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Mohamed A. Daw

Keyword(s):

Armed Conflict ◽

Early Stage ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

Cumulative Number ◽

The Novel ◽

Global Pandemic ◽

Large Numbers ◽

Public Data ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

The Impact

Background: Since the Arab uprising in 2011, Libya, Syria and Yemen have gone through major internal armed conflicts. This resulted in large numbers of deaths, injuries, and population displacements, with collapse of the healthcare systems. Furthermore, the situation was complicated by the emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, which made the populations of these countries struggle under unusual conditions to deal with both the pandemic and the ongoing wars. This study aimed to determine the impact of the armed conflicts on the epidemiology of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) within these war-torn countries and highlight the strategies needed to combat the spread of the pandemic and its consequences.Methods: Official and public data concerning the dynamics of the armed conflicts and the spread of SARS-COV-2 in Libya, Syria and Yemen were collected from all available sources, starting from the emergence of COVID-19 in each country until the end of December 2020. Datasets were analyzed by a set of statistical techniques and the weekly resolved data were used to probe the link between the intensity levels of the conflict and the prevalence of COVID-19.Results: The data indicated that there was an increase in the intensity of the violence at an early stage from March to August 2020, when it approximately doubled in the three countries, particularly in Libya. During that period, few cases of COVID-19 were reported, ranging from 5 to 53 cases/day. From September to December 2020, a significant decline in the intensity of the armed conflicts was accompanied by steep upsurges in the rate of COVID-19 cases, which reached up to 500 cases/day. The accumulative cases vary from one country to another during the armed conflict. The highest cumulative number of cases were reported in Libya, Syria and Yemen.Conclusions: Our analysis demonstrates that the armed conflict provided an opportunity for SARS-CoV-2 to spread. The early weeks of the pandemic coincided with the most intense period of the armed conflicts, and few cases were officially reported. This indicates undercounting and hidden spread during the early stage of the pandemic. The pandemic then spread dramatically as the armed conflict declined, reaching its greatest spread by December 2020. Full-blown transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic in these countries is expected. Therefore, urgent national and international strategies should be implemented to combat the pandemic and its consequences.

Download Full-text

Six years of total ozone column measurements from SCIAMACHY nadir observations

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques ◽

10.5194/amt-2-87-2009 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 87-98 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

C. Lerot ◽

M. Van Roozendael ◽

J. van Geffen ◽

J. van Gent ◽

C. Fayt ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cross Sections ◽

Total Ozone ◽

Large Scale ◽

European Space Agency ◽

Data Sets ◽

Data Set ◽

Ozone Data ◽

Space Agency ◽

German Aerospace ◽

The Impact

Abstract. Total O3 columns have been retrieved from six years of SCIAMACHY nadir UV radiance measurements using SDOAS, an adaptation of the GDOAS algorithm previously developed at BIRA-IASB for the GOME instrument. GDOAS and SDOAS have been implemented by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the version 4 of the GOME Data Processor (GDP) and in version 3 of the SCIAMACHY Ground Processor (SGP), respectively. The processors are being run at the DLR processing centre on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA). We first focus on the description of the SDOAS algorithm with particular attention to the impact of uncertainties on the reference O3 absorption cross-sections. Second, the resulting SCIAMACHY total ozone data set is globally evaluated through large-scale comparisons with results from GOME and OMI as well as with ground-based correlative measurements. The various total ozone data sets are found to agree within 2% on average. However, a negative trend of 0.2–0.4%/year has been identified in the SCIAMACHY O3 columns; this probably originates from instrumental degradation effects that have not yet been fully characterized.

Download Full-text

Legal Protection of Children in Non-International Armed Conflicts in Nigeria

African Journal of Legal Studies ◽

10.1163/17087384-12340074 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-27

Author(s):

Olaitan Oluwaseyi Olusegun

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Armed Conflict ◽

Legal Protection ◽

Legal Framework ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

Conflict Situations ◽

Legal Frameworks ◽

The Impact ◽

Domestic Law

Abstract Armed conflicts are characterised by violence and human rights violations with various implications on the citizens, economy and development of nations. The impact is however more pronounced with life-long consequences on children, the most vulnerable members of the society. This article examines the impact of non-international armed conflicts on children in Nigeria and identifies the laws for the protection of children against armed conflicts, both in international law and Nigeria’s domestic law. It also addresses the challenges involved in the protection of children in armed conflict situations in Nigeria. The study found that legal efforts to protect children have not been given sufficient attention in Nigeria. This is mostly due to various challenges including the fragmentation of legal framework and the refusal to domesticate relevant treaties. It is thus recommended that these challenges be addressed through the implementation of effective legal frameworks.

Download Full-text

Evaluating Infill Well Performance and Fracture Driven Interactions Using Intervention Based Distributed Fiber Optics

10.2118/204184-ms ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ahmed Attia ◽

Matthew Lawrence

Keyword(s):

Fiber Optics ◽

Fracture Network ◽

Data Sets ◽

Well Performance ◽

Design Strategies ◽

Data Set ◽

Geological Features ◽

Production Output ◽

Long Carbon Fiber ◽

The Impact

Abstract Distributed Fiber Optics (DFO) technology has been the new face for unconventional well diagnostics. This technology focuses on measuring Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Distrusted Temperature Sensing (DTS) to give an in-depth understanding of well productivity pre and post stimulation. Many different completion design strategies, both on surface and downhole, are used to obtain the best fracture network outcome; however, with complex geological features, different fracture designs, and fracture driven interactions (FDIs) effecting nearby wells, it is difficult to grasp a full understanding on completion design performance for each well. Validating completion designs and improving on the learnings found in each data set should be the foundation in developing each field. Capturing a data set with strong evidence of what works and what doesn't, can help the operator make better engineering decisions to make more efficient wells as well as help gauge the spacing between each well. The focus of this paper will be on a few case studies in the Bakken which vividly show how infill wells greatly interfered with production output. A DFO deployed with a 0.6" OD, 23,000-foot-long carbon fiber rod to acquire DAS and DTS for post frac flow, completion, and interference evaluation. This paper will dive into the DFO measurements taken post frac to further explain what effects are seen on completion designs caused by interferences with infill wells; the learnings taken from the DFO post frac were applied to further escalate the understanding and awareness of how infill wells will preform on future pad sites. A showcase of three separate data sets from the Bakken will identify how effective DFO technology can be in evaluating and making informed decisions on future frac completions. In this paper we will also show and discuss how DFO can measure real time FDI events and what measures can be taken to lessen the impact on negative interference caused by infill wells.

Download Full-text

The shifting of climate types: manifestation to phenology and ecosystems structure

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5689 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gunta Kalvāne ◽

Andis Kalvāns ◽

Agrita Briede ◽

Ilmārs Krampis ◽

Dārta Kaupe ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Breaking Point ◽

Data Sets ◽

Precipitation Regime ◽

Climate Type ◽

Data Set ◽

Temperature And Precipitation ◽

Spatial Changes ◽

Temporal And Spatial ◽

The Impact

According to the K&#246;ppen climate classification, almost the entire area of Latvia belongs to the same climate type, Dfb, which is characterized by humid continental climates with warm (sometimes hot) summers and cold winters.&#160; In the last decades whether conditions on the western coast of Latvia more characterized by temperate maritime climates. In this area there has been a transition (and still ongoing) to the climate type Cfb.Temporal and spatial changes of temperature and precipitation regime have been examined in whole territory to identify the breaking point of climate type shifts. We used two type of climatological data sets: gridded daily temperature from the E-OBS data set version 21.0e (Cornes et al., 2018) and direct observations from meteorological stations (data source: Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre). The temperature and precipitation regime have changed significantly in the last century - seasonal and regional differences can be observed in the territory of Latvia.We have digitized and analysed more than 47 thousand phenological records, fixed by volunteers in period 1970-2018. Study has shown that significant seasonal changes have taken place across the Latvian landscape due to climate change (Kalv&#257;ne and Kalv&#257;ns, 2021). The largest changes have been recorded for the unfolding (BBCH11) and flowering (BBCH61) phase of plants&#160;&#8211; almost 90% of the data included in the database demonstrate a negative trend. The winter of 1988/1989 may be considered as breaking point, it has been common that many phases have begun sooner (particularly spring phases), while abiotic autumn phases have been characterized by late years.Study gives an overview aboutclimate change (also climate type shift) impacts on ecosystems in Latvia, particularly to forest and semi-natural grasslands and temporal and spatial changes of vegetation structure and distribution areas.This study was carried out within the framework of the Impact of Climate Change on Phytophenological Phases and Related Risks in the Baltic Region (No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/2/18/265) ERDF project and the Climate change and sustainable use of natural resources&#160;institutional research grant&#160;of the University of Latvia (No. AAP2016/B041//ZD2016/AZ03).Cornes, R. C., van der Schrier, G., van den Besselaar, E. J. M. and Jones, P. D.: An Ensemble Version of the E-OBS Temperature and Precipitation Data Sets, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 123(17), 9391&#8211;9409, doi:10.1029/2017JD028200, 2018.Kalv&#257;ne, G. and Kalv&#257;ns, A.(2021): Phenological trends of multi-taxonomic groups in Latvia, 1970-2018, Int. J. Biometeorol., doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-02068-8, 2021.

Download Full-text