Osama bin Hidin'

At the risk of offending the good folks at Web Log Solutions LLC, I felt obliged to post about this report that Scojo recently linked to. It's a paper by a team of geography professors at UCLA and is apparently the first scientific approach to finding Osama bin Laden. It's really a fascinating read. The team relies on biogeographic theories - normally used to predict how plant and animal species distribute themselves over space and time - including distance-decay and island biogeography (explained succinctly in the report). They use spatial scale analyses (global, regional, local) and rely on data like life history characteristics of bin Laden (i.e. requires a power source for his dialysis machine) to develop likely physical attributes of where he might be hiding (i.e. in a structure with an electric grid hookup or generator). Along with high-quality satellite images available to the public, they present a convincing case that narrows bin Laden's likely location down to a small area (they even suggest three structures in Parachinar, Pakistan as excellent candidates).

There are many assumptions made, but they are logical and the theory is testable, refinable and allows for practical, working hypotheses on bin Laden's likely location. Pretty amazing stuff.

A few thoughts upon reading this:

1) I hope the military/intelligence community has a team doing something of this nature already.

2) If not, get this report to Panetta!

3) Scooter already made the knocking-on-the-doors joke, so I won't touch that.

Props to GeoScoot for his initial post.