Irregular Problems and Biased Solutions

2020 ◽  
pp. 136-179
Author(s):  
Jon R. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
Ample Opportunity ◽  
Information Practice ◽  
Practice Framework ◽  
External Actors ◽  
Institutional Choices ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Adaptive Practice

This chapter details how the U.S. intervention in Iraq completed a full cycle through the information practice framework between 2003 and 2008. During the invasion and its aftermath, managed practice turned into insulated practice, which prompted both internal and external actors to adapt. During the subsequent occupation, adaptive practice turned into problematic practice, which in turn encouraged the U.S. military to institutionalize doctrinal reforms. The chapter explores the ways in which insulated practice still persisted at the end of this process, curiously enough, even in a tactical unit close to the fight that had ample opportunity to make sense of facts on the ground. It also surveys the Special Operations Task Force's (SOTF) information system and then compares the SOTF to other units that conducted a similar mission (Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC) or operated in the same environment (U.S. Marines) to demonstrate how different institutional choices can generate different qualities of information practice.

Perceptions of Flash Drought in the U.S.: How do End-Users and Researchers Compare?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonya Haigh ◽  
Joel Lisonbee ◽  
Marina Skumanich ◽  
Molly Woloszyn
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
End Users ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Drought Mitigation ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The U.S

<p>Defining flash drought is important not only for the development of the science but also for ensuring clear and useful early warning information to end users. In preparation for a December 2020 U.S-based workshop on flash drought, the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) undertook a survey of NIDIS contacts to explore how flash drought is understood within and outside of the research community. End users represented in the survey include researchers (outside of flash drought specialty), policy-makers, decision-makers, communicators, and educators and public engagement specialists, largely working within universities or federal agencies across the U.S. Flash drought researchers were asked to describe how they intend for the term “flash drought” to be interpreted when they use it. End users (whether they had heard/used the term before or not) were asked to describe what they think of when they hear the term “flash drought”. Their answers emerged into themes, including: onset/intensification, duration, drivers, impacts, seasonality, predictability, intensity, spatial scale, and uncertainty about its meaning. In this presentation, we will elaborate upon these themes, and discuss similarities and differences in how flash drought researchers and end users conceptualize flash drought.</p>

Covert Warriors for Hire

2018 ◽  
pp. 86-117
Author(s):  
Kyle Burke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
The World ◽  
Reagan Era ◽  
The U.S

In the late 1970s, a new set of Americans took up the dream of a global anticommunist revolution. Many were high-ranking CIA and military officers who had been forced from their jobs by the Ford and Carter administrations in the wake of the Vietnam War. As Congress passed new laws constraining the United States’ clandestine services, these ex-soldiers and spies argued that the state’s deteriorating covert war-making abilities signaled a broader decline in U.S. power. To remedy that, retired covert warriors such as U.S. Army General John Singlaub, a thirty-year veteran of special operations, entered the world of conservative activism, which promised both steady pay and power in retirement. Working in the shadow of the state, they sought to revitalize a form of combat to which they had dedicated their lives. Some even started private military firms to fill in for the U.S. government. Meanwhile, hundreds of American men, mostly disgruntled Vietnam veterans, sought new lives as mercenaries, first in Southeast Asia and then in Rhodesia and Angola. In the late 1970s, these two camps of revanchist Americans—retired covert warriors and aspiring mercenaries—established patterns of paramilitarism that would transform the anticommunist international in the Reagan era.

scholarly journals Modeling Regional-Scale Wildland Fire Emissions with the Wildland Fire Emissions Information System*

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy H. F. French ◽  
Donald McKenzie ◽  
Tyler Erickson ◽  
Benjamin Koziol ◽  
Michael Billmire ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information System ◽  
North America ◽  
Fuel Consumption ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Web

Abstract As carbon modeling tools become more comprehensive, spatial data are needed to improve quantitative maps of carbon emissions from fire. The Wildland Fire Emissions Information System (WFEIS) provides mapped estimates of carbon emissions from historical forest fires in the United States through a web browser. WFEIS improves access to data and provides a consistent approach to estimating emissions at landscape, regional, and continental scales. The system taps into data and tools developed by the U.S. Forest Service to describe fuels, fuel loadings, and fuel consumption and merges information from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration on fire location and timing. Currently, WFEIS provides web access to Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) burned area for North America and U.S. fire-perimeter maps from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity products from the USGS, overlays them on 1-km fuel maps for the United States, and calculates fuel consumption and emissions with an open-source version of the Consume model. Mapped fuel moisture is derived from daily meteorological data from remote automated weather stations. In addition to tabular output results, WFEIS produces multiple vector and raster formats. This paper provides an overview of the WFEIS system, including the web-based system functionality and datasets used for emissions estimates. WFEIS operates on the web and is built using open-source software components that work with open international standards such as keyhole markup language (KML). Examples of emissions outputs from WFEIS are presented showing that the system provides results that vary widely across the many ecosystems of North America and are consistent with previous emissions modeling estimates and products.

Biofutures: Race and the governance of health

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiloh Krupar ◽  
Nadine Ehlers
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Information System ◽  
Geographic Information System ◽  
Health Care System ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Gis Technologies ◽  
Spatial Profiling ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The U.S

This article addresses biomedical forms of racial targeting under neoliberal biopolitics. We explore two racial targeting technologies: The development of race-based pharmaceuticals, specifically BiDil; and medical hot spotting, a practice that uses Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies and spatial profiling to identify populations that are medically vulnerable in order to facilitate preemptive care. These technologies are ostensibly deployed under neoliberal biopolitics and the governance of health to affirm life. We argue, however, that these efforts further subject racial minorities—and specifically black subjects—to the cost–benefit logics of neoliberalism in the U.S. health care system and enduring anti-blackness. What is called for is an abolitionist biomedicine that recognizes and seeks to challenge the multifarious ways that race is ontologized as a corporeal and/or spatial truth while attending to the very real embodied effects of structural racism.

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