Presentation by Cathy Wildford from Exclusive Analysis on Esri European User Conference 2011.

1. Welcome #EUC11

2. EPOP:
Quantifying Violent Risk for
Every Point on the Planet
A global, intelligence-driven political violence risk model
Cathy Wilford, GIS Developer

3. WHO ARE WE?
• Specialist intelligence company
• Forecasting political and violent risks worldwide
• London-based, but with global intelligence
network of 1000+ regional analysts
and local sources
• Respected for rigorous methodology,
objectivity, and precision

4. WHAT IS EPOP?
EVERY • EPOP is a risk evaluation tool
POINT
ON THE that delivers precise risk assessment
PLANET
for Every Point on the Planet

5. WHAT IS EPOP?
EVERY • EPOP is a risk evaluation tool
POINT
ON THE that delivers precise risk assessment
PLANET
for Every Point on the Planet
LATITUDE = 55.757283
LONGITUDE = 37.61297
WAR RISK = 3.75
TERRORISM = 5.07
CIVIL UNREST = 4.72
COMBINED PV = 4.51

6. OUR OUTPUTS
• Online web-based products
• Tailored bespoke reports
• Ad-hoc projects for specific problems
• Standalone location intelligence products

7. HOW GIS SUPPORTS OUR WORK
Traditional static maps for bespoke reports …

8. Ad-hoc analysis projects

9. Regional and urban risk assessment

10. …in various formats

11. TerrorRisk in MapInfo

12. TerrorRisk in Google Earth

13. TerrorRisk in ArcGIS

14. Country Risk
• Click to add text
• Clearly this is going to be a lot of
text

15. Indicator Events

16. So we have all this information….

17. … how to pull it all together?
THE CHALLENGE:
• Create one neat super-model
• from a range of different sources,
products and methodologies
• in order to deliver very precise
‘risk scores’ on a 0-10 scale
• for each of four perils
(war, terrorism, civil unrest,
combined political violence)
• FOR EVERY SINGLE POINT
ON THE PLANET

19. THE SOLUTION
Map Algebra!

20. THE INPUTS
Converting to raster andinputs
Scalable for future combining:
TerrorRisk Target Data
Historic Event Density Maps
Relative Regional Risk Analysis
Country Scores from CREAM

21. Every Point? What is a ‘point’ anyway?
• With a raster resolution of 0.005 degrees:
cell size = very approx. 500 metres squared
• About 2 billion cells in total
to cover the earth’s surface
• Each ‘EPOP’ raster file = 10 MB
• x 4 peril scores
• = 8 BILLION separate calculations

22. … boom
Unexpected Errors

23. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
…. Eventually !

24. PHASE TWO
• FULL AUTOMATION
- how to deal with ongoing data updates?
• TESTING TESTING TESTING
- fine-tuning the all-important
magic mapAlgebra formula

25. Automation: Designing the workflow
From model building….

26. … to Model Builder

27. … to Python scripts

28. …and scheduled run tasks
• Migration to a server
+ more space and time
= less frustration
Task Scheduler

29. Development
• Migration to a server and Desktop 10
+ more space and time
= less frustration
• Rewriting the Python code for
ArcPy 10 compatibility
• Constant re-runs with each tweak
of the formula

30. Development
• Version 3.2 of the formula

31. THE EPOP SUPER TOOL
• Automated Asset Risk Scoring

32. THE EPOP SUPER TOOL
• Automated Asset Risk Scoring

33. THE EPOP SUPER TOOL
• Automated Asset Risk Scoring

34. Published to the web with ArcGIS Server
Served up as a WMS,
overlaid onto Google Maps

36. Corporate security, risk, and business development

37. Insurance and reinsurance

38. IS IT USEFUL?
• “Congratulations on what is a fantastic undertaking.
It’s really well done, this is en-route to becoming, without wanting to
exaggerate, game-changing in a lot of ways because it would so very
much relieve the burden of what the security and intelligence departments
of a lot of big companies have to do right now, chasing around to find
information and ending with a very subjective analysis of different
locations. This would streamline that immensely”.
• “The question I am asked is what do we know about the security
situation both immediately around the well sites and on the route
itself between the sites and the base, and whether there are nearby
risk hotspots nearby which could potentially spill over and affect
our operation. Being able to view the results on a map
I could answer those questions almost instantly.”

39. IS IT USEFUL?
“All models are wrong.
But some models are useful.”
Simon Sole, CEO, Exclusive Analysis Ltd

40. Thank You
cathy.wilford@exclusive-analysis.com