Geolocation data and the hunt for Joseph Kony

The hunt for Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), served as an interesting footnote to this morning’s conference session on how geolocation technology and data can help companies plan for business, understand transportation and anticipate conflict zones.

DigitalGlobe, a commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, explained how it took the locations of past LRA flash points and fed that data into a model which used machine-learning to search for other locations similar to the ones where previous attacks had taken place.

Based on this, the model was able to suggest the regions where future attacks were likely to take place. In one of these regions, Caesar Acellam, an LRA commander and military strategist, was captured alive by Ugandan forces.

In addition to capturing warlords, geospatial analysis can also be used in areas like aid evaluation, said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB. However, Heald had a warning for delegates about the danger of using geolocation technology in certain parts of the world.

In Somalia, for instance, being caught with a GPS device will lead to accusations of spying. The same is true of Algeria, where charges of espionage carry the death penalty.