WARFARE IN SUBURBIA

It is hypothesized that modern suburbia provides for greater mobility than cover in military operations. This ready penetrability gives the advantage to the attack rather than the defense. The strategic implication of this denial of current and traditional military thinking is that a Soviet attack along the Börde of Germany might progress more rapidly than presently envisaged and nullify the present NATO intention of winning time for a political solution to any conflict.     

UK-based terrorists' antecedent behavior: A spatial and temporal analysis

Background and purposeTerrorism is a real and present danger. The build-up to an attack includes planning, travel, and reconnaissance which necessarily require the offender to move through their environment. Whilst research has examined patterns of terrorist attack locations, with a few exceptions (e.g. Rossmo & Harries, 2011), it has not examined the spatial behavior of the terrorists themselves. In this paper, we investigate whether the spatial mobility patterns of terrorists resemble those of criminals (and the wider population) and if these change in the run up to their attacks.MethodUsing mobile phone data records for the ringleaders of four different UK-based terrorist plots in the months leading up to their attacks, we examine the frequency with which terrorists visit different locations, how far they travel from key anchor points such as their home, the distance between sequential cell-site hits and how their range of movement varies as the planned time to attack approaches.ConclusionsLike the wider population (and criminals), the sample of terrorists examined exhibited predictable patterns of spatial behavior. Most movements were close to their home location or safe house, and they visited a relatively small number of locations most of the time. Disaggregating these patterns over time provided mixed evidence regarding the way in which their spatial activity changed as the time to the planned attack approached. The findings are interpreted in terms of how they inform criminological understanding of the spatial behavior of terrorists, and the implications for law enforcement.     

The Use of Supplementary Beading

Abstract

Political geography has long been a major field of interest for geography teachers and students. One of the most interesting areas of political geography is the study of boundaries and boundary zones. In this context, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as a political separating agent has been one of the most controversial issues in the twentieth century. The demilitarized zone of Vietnam, Korea, and Israel all constitute major zones of tension and friction. The major reason for the instability attending these frictions is that the DMZ's were created by military armistice agreements rather than more conventional political processes. Thus the DMZ's are the product of an unresolved conflict. This geopolitical analysis of the Israel-Syrian DMZ describes how the zone was created and how it functioned between 1949 and 1967.     

Obfuscating spatial point tracks with simulated crowding

ABSTRACT

Spatial point tracks are of concern for an increasing number of analysts studying spatial behaviour patterns and environmental effects. Take an epidemiologist studying the behaviour of cyclists and how their health is affected by the city’s air quality. The accuracy of such analyses critically depends on the positional accuracy of the tracked points. This poses a serious privacy risk. Tracks easily reveal a person’s identity since the places visited function as fingerprints. Current obfuscation-based privacy protection methods, however, mostly rely on point quality reduction, such as spatial cloaking, grid masking or random noise, and thus render an obfuscated track less useful for exposure assessment. We introduce simulated crowding as a point quality preserving obfuscation principle that is based on adding fake points. We suggest two crowding strategies based on extending and masking a track to defend against inference attacks. We test them across various attack strategies and compare them to state-of-the-art obfuscation techniques both in terms of information loss and attack resilience. Results indicate that simulated crowding provides high resilience against home attacks under constantly low information loss.     

Population Distribution in Mexico—1950

Abstract

To participate in a modern economy, every region needs at least one bigjob (Basic Income-Generating JOB), an economic activity that brings money into a region from outside. Accurate identification of bigjobs is needed for effective infrastructure-building, vocational education, and public subsidies. This article describes a mapping activity that helps students identify bigjobs in state economies. The activity shows that the farm output and industrial production of California, although very large in absolute terms, are below the national average per capita. Further analysis of census data leads to the conclusion that the profits (capital gains) from sales of existing houses are arguably one of the largest bigjobs in the state. The decline in profits between 1988 (the peak year) and 1992 (during a slump) was much greater than the cutbacks in high-tech military contracts (often blamed for the high unemployment in the early 1990s).     

A Review of “Route 66: Iconography of the American Highway”

Loblolly pines in Texas and Louisiana exhibit different reactions to moisture extremes, as indicated by the susceptibility of weakened individuals to attack by southern pine beetles. In Texas, intense insect outbreaks among pines occur during periods of extreme moisture surplus, whereas extreme moisture deficits render the Louisiana pines susceptible to attack. Intraspecies tree reponse to moisture extremes therefore appears to be spatially variable and partially dependent upon the frequency occurrence of severe climatic conditions.     

A geographical information system to facilitate military housing management

Abstract

The Department of the Army must provide its personnel with acceptable housing at minimum cost within the vicinity of military installations. To achieve these housing objectives, the Army often has to enter into agreements for the long-term leasing of existing housing. A decision-support system, called HANS, has been developed to project the number of leases that must be arranged.

This paper describes a geographical information system (GIS) enhancement that helps Army managers to locate the lease properties and display characteristics of the properties. It also overviews the benefits, challenges, and limitations of the enhanced system.     

The Spanish League: A Geographical Conspiracy

Abstract

Prior to adoption of the metric system by Spain in 1860 there existed a variety of linear measures throughout the country. Almost half of Spain's fifty provinces applied differing values for the league or its smaller component, the yard. Often these discrepancies were due to topography, the rural leagues being determined more by guesswork than by accurate measurement; more often, the differences were due to the type of league employed (i.e., postal, military, or ordinary stagecoach). A third factor compounding this confusion was the changing value of the league over periods of time. This study is intended to clarify the problem for historical geographers and economic historians, and to indicate why conversion to the metric system was essential at this time.     

The Matanuska Valley of Southern Alaska

Abstract

This paper introduces global positioning system (GPS) technology to nonspecialist geographers and recommends a framework for implementing GPS instructional modules in college geography courses. The GPS system was developed as a worldwide satellite-based system by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to simplify and improve military and civilian navigation and positioning. By presenting GPS in several courses, the approach outlined can expose large numbers of students to GPS and may help to demonstrate the utility of GPS for several geographic subdisciplines.     

The Ryukyu Islands: Geographic Aspects of A Change in Sovereignty

Abstract

The Ryukyu Islands occupy a strategic geographical location in the Far East. On May 15, 1972, their administration reverted from the United States, which had controlled them since 1945, to Japan. The geographic aspects of this notably peaceful change in sovereignty merits understanding. Diversified in character, the Rynkyu Islands have been undergoing significant economic and social change and development since 1945; in the immediate future the American military presence will continue to exercise a profound economic influence.     

Subversive formalization: efforts to (re)form land,labor, and behavior in a carioca favela

ABSTRACT

State entities in Brazil have rolled out numerous programs to “integrate” precarious settlements into the so-called formal city of Rio de Janeiro. Two of the most visceral integration projects in Rio’s favelas have been infrastructural upgrading and public security via military police occupation. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and policy analysis, in this paper I trace how these projects attempt to formalize land, labor, and behavior in a complex of favelas called Complexo do Alemão. Inspired by postcolonial urban approaches to formalization, I argue that formality/informality as it operates through these projects is, in part, a performative distinction deployed by the state, echoing elite and popular socio-spatial imaginaries. I add, however, that non-state actors are also involved in their own practices of formalization. Residents themselves are re-making diverse forms of property, employment, and behavior through processes of subversive formalization, informed by their geographically-embedded and historical relationships with one another.     

A Study in Historico-Geography—The Establishing of the Ohio-Michigan Boundary Line

Abstract

Geography is a part of scientific knowledge devoted to the study of two fundamental relations of human life: relations with the natural world and relations across space. These relations do not exist in isolation but are merely aspects of life as a whole. They must be understood and taught as parts of a total theory of human existence. Marxism is such an attempt to holistically understand the world. It is also, however, an attempt to change the world. Although Marxists recognize that capitalism has yielded enormous technical and material benefits for a minority of the world's people, we now find other competing purposes rising to primary positions in the list of urgent societal tasks. These purposes include equalizing living standards, finding jobs for the present doomed generation of children, removing the economic and social tensions underlying dangerous military antagonisms, and achieving a stable, managed relation with the natural environment. For purposes like these, Marxists consider capitalism outdated as a form of social and economic organization. Most Western Marxists are also critical of the centralized socialism of the Soviet Union. Socialism in the Soviet Union has achieved a modest standard of living for its working class. But the Soviet Union has yet to begin an approach towards a true model of socialism in the sense of decentralizing economic and political power directly to the mass of the people. Because we live in capitalist countries however, the focus of this critique is capitalist, rather than Soviet-style socialist society.     

Activities of American Geographers

Cognitive distance is analyzed in relation to various elements of the built environment. The basis for accepting a power function as the underlying functional relationship between cognitive distance and its objective counterpart is discussed. This counterpart has been assumed to be objective distance. Evidence is presented to indicate that cognition of distance is based upon travel time rather than upon objective distance or upon objective distance modified by other elements of the built environment.     

What does Gunshot Detection Technology tell us about gun violence?

PurposeEvaluate the sensitivity of Gunshot Detection Technology (GDT) relative to Calls for Service. Existing crime data sources have biases that do not present a complete picture of gun-related crime. GDT may offer a new metric for firearm crimes. However, few studies have assessed the accuracy of GDT and its relationship to other measures of violence.MethodsGDT and gun crime-related Calls for Service in Washington, DC during 2010 were studied. Using temporal comparisons for month, day of year, weekday, and hour of the day, spatial comparisons on a quarter-mile square grid, and a Poisson-Lognormal-CAR spatial regression model on a combined grid by time period dataset, we examined the sensitivity of GDT activations relative to gunshot-related calls for service.ResultsThe results showed that relative GDT sensitivity changed by time and by space. In particular, the relative sensitivity of GDT was much stronger in the evening and at nighttime than in the daytime. In terms of spatial variation, we found that GDT sensitivity decreased with distance from the nearest zone centroid. In addition, there were two small geographic areas in the study area in which the relative GDT sensitivity was lower than expected.ConclusionsGDT systems identify the frequency and locational accuracy of gunshot incidents, particularly at nighttime. This technology has the potential to improve data collection on gun use and violence and produce more accurate representations if the temporal and distance limitations of the technology are understood. GDT may improve gun detection and, thereby, improve police operations and public support for police.     

SCALING TECHNIQUES IN THE ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL COGNITION DATA∗

The utility of nonmetric, multidimensional-scaling techniques is demonstrated for the analysis and collection of environmental-cognition data. By comparing the multidimensional-scaling solutions of a real-setting map to scaling solutions for sketch maps and two psychophysical, distance-scaling procedures, we demonstrate that magnitude estimation of actual interpoint distances is comparable in accuracy to sketch maps when produced without constraints, or when subjects are given a specified list of landmarks to include on their maps. Triadic comparisons of actual interpoint distances were less accurate than the three other techniques.     

Ad hoc matching of vectorial road networks

In integration of road maps modeled as road vector data, the main task is matching pairs of objects that represent, in different maps, the same segment of a real-world road. In an ad hoc integration, the matching is done for a specific need and, thus, is performed in real time, where only a limited preprocessing is possible. Usually, ad hoc integration is performed as part of some interaction with a user and, hence, the matching algorithm is required to complete its task in time that is short enough for human users to provide feedback to the application, that is, in no more than a few seconds. Such interaction is typical of services on the World Wide Web and to applications in car-navigation systems or in handheld devices.

Several algorithms were proposed in the past for matching road vector data; however, these algorithms are not efficient enough for ad hoc integration. This article presents algorithms for ad hoc integration of maps in which roads are represented as polylines. The main novelty of these algorithms is in using only the locations of the endpoints of the polylines rather than trying to match whole lines. The efficiency of the algorithms is shown both analytically and experimentally. In particular, these algorithms do not require the existence of a spatial index, and they are more efficient than an alternative approach based on using a grid index. Extensive experiments using various maps of three different cities show that our approach to matching road networks is efficient and accurate (i.e., it provides high recall and precision).

General Terms:Algorithms, Experimentation     

SOZIALBRACHE—A PHENOMENON IN THE RURAL LANDSCAPE OF GERMANY

Recent federal court decisions have emphasized the need to eliminate schools whose racial composition varies from that of the whole district by more than a fixed percent. A linear programming model is presented to assist school administrators in developing desegregation plans that comply with these guidelines. An efficient solutional technique that exploits the special structure of this model increases problem-size capabilities. A study of the Columbus City School District examines the tradeoffs involved at different levels of desegregation.     

Communication from readers

Abstract

In geographic education, a scientific approach is typically acclaimed as the most appropriate approach to teach, model, and use in the schools. This approach, however, is more honored in the professional literature and meetings than in teaching. Admittedly, many practical problems provide opportunities and challenges for teachers to use the scientific approach. The recent trend toward “standards” in the profession, moreover, may also prove more a hindrance than a help in achieving scientific literacy.     

Maps the Blind Can See

Abstract

The Thrifty Geographer Like previous reviews in this series, the eighth Thrifty Geographer examines MS/PC-DOS software that costs less than $51.00. New programs reviewed below deal with one of the staples of geography, maps. We also give an update on an atlas program that was first reviewed in 1992. AUTOMAP EUROPE, Automap Inc., Building C-113, 9831 South 51st Street, Phoenix, AZ 85044. $49.50.

AUTOMAP EUROPE, Automap Inc., Building C-l13,9831 South 51st Street, Phoenix, AZ 85044. $49.50.

Water Resources Management: In Search of an Environmental Ethic by David Lewis Feldman Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. 247 pp.

The Hispano Homeland by Richard L. Nostrand Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. xiv and 281 pp., maps, illustrations, tables, appendixes, index, and bibliography. ISBN 0-8061-2414-8. $29.95.

Volcanoes by Rodman Snead Lincoln, Nebraska: National Council for Geographic Education/Great Plains National. 1993. 60 slides, annotations, bibliography. $70.00.