TEDxToronto is the official TEDx conference for Toronto, Canada. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, it brings together the city’s foremost thought leaders, change makers and everyday people from each discipline and challenges them to deliver powerful, unforgettable and unique TEDxTalks.

The theme of the second annual conference is A Call to Action. A total of 300 spots are reserved for audience members, while thousands more across the country will join via satellite locations or live video stream.

The Sentinel Project’s Co-Director Taneem Talukdar has been accepted as a delegate and will be representing us at the event. We look forward to connecting with others in the community and perhaps being able to work with them in the future!

In a previous post we discussed the basics of the approach we are taking to developing an information model of at-risk communities. This really just means a structured approach to organizing all the information we have about the situation we are monitoring.

Our goal is to being able to organize everything we know about a particular situation so that:

1. It is easier for us to characterize the risk of genocide based on what we know

2. We can rapidly update our risk assessments with a continuous stream of new data and events that our monitoring teams collect over time

3. We can easily communicate the big picture perspective to others – organizations that can take action on our early warnings, the media and the public at large

Our plan is to combine the use of existing visualization and business intelligence tools with a relatively simple tag-based visualization timeline that will help us accomplish all of the above.

The basic idea is to code and classify all information that we collect with meta-data tags. The set of tags taken as a whole are the dimensions along which we perceive the situation of concern that we are monitoring.

The core set of tags will be based on the operational processes that we look for – an initial approach we are taking based on the 8 Stages of Genocide model. We will thus classify each new data item as being of interest because of its relevancy to one or more of the operational processes.

The core set of tags will be augmented by new tags that will be created on the fly by analysts that are specific to the situation of concern. For example, names of key political figures, organizations or geographical regions that emerge from the situation. It will be possible to sort and resort everything we know by their tags to explore relationships that might not be obvious initially.

Once we have this set of data and associated meta-data we can use existing BI analysis tools to slice and dice the data as we need. For example, the Tableau platform.

At the same time however we also want a very simple and effective way to present what we know to anyone who is interested. To accomplish that, we are also going to generate an timeline of the events we track in our system available over the web.

Below is a mockup example of this might look like:

The categories on the left-hand side are just treated as tags within the system, which means that any other set of tags can be used to order the information we have. It is expected that there will be a default perspective but that there will be value in shuffling the view based on tags that are specific to the situation.

And this is a mockup concept of what an individual data point might look like (i.e. what happens when one of the circles from above is clicked):

The mockup is using an example of a typical datapoint one would find with the Baha’i situation in Iran. The use of situation specific tags is demonstrated in the upper right-hand corner. Some ideas about additionally classifying the nature of the data point is explore on the lower right-hand corner.

The mockups given here are some initial non-functional ideas that we are tinkering with – far from complete or finalized. The idea is that the basic representation of the model will be the grid timeline where each new data point that we add will be represented as a blob of varying size, sorted by some key tags. Clicking on each tag opens up the associated details and analysis.

Its a simple approach and heavier analysis will be left to the professional BI tools that we work with. But the timeline is a simple intuitive way to access all the information we have that we hope will prove to be engaging. It should take only moments for anyone looking at the grid for the first time to quickly understand our representation and start exploring the model and ultimately, our goal is to allow anyone in the world to start contributing to these models. That is where we see the real potential of this approach. Anyone can help flag potential genocides and prevent them from happening.

We are eager to build an initial working version and share that with others so that we start improving the process iteratively after that. Stay tuned for when we release an initial version of the system!

If you have any feedback please send us email at contact@thesentinelproject.org. Or you can visit us on Facebook.

Genocide is a complex problem and predicting and responding to it are usually constrained by several factors including geography, the difficulty of information gathering, international legality, and political will (within the state in question and outside of it). Mapping and analysing the factors leading up to genocide is undoubtedly an ambitious goal, but the Sentinel Project is equipping itself to achieve this.

A variety of tools are already available which can inform our development process. The Violent Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) is a clinical tool designed to determine the likelihood of violent recidivism in individual high-risk offenders. Like genocide, the likelihood of an offender re-offending after they have been released back into the community has been problematic and controversial matter. Clinical assessments in violence research which were previously the mainstay of dealing with offenders have been found to be increasingly ineffective. This is due mainly to the fact that clinical assessments rely on the interpretive and subjective evaluation of a practitioner guided by professional literature, and as such tend to be unreliable. This is the reason why the VRAG employs an actuarial model which makes predictions of a particular outcome (violent recidivism) based on objectively measured variables such as age and sex. Variables in VRAG are selected based on their distinctive contribution to the outcome and weights for each variable are then computed.

Numerous models have been developed to assess the risk level of genocide taking place in a given country. Once genocide has begun, other tools such as Gregory Stanton’s Eight Stages of Genocide model have shown that genocides generally follow predictable patterns. With this in mind, the Sentinel Project research team has begun collecting the risk factors and variables identified by various scholars. Unlike violent recidivism as monitored by VRAG, genocides are rarely discrete or isolated events. They take place across various territories, sometimes concurrently or sequentially and are always systematically carried out by groups. Compared to individual violent crime, genocide is more fluid in terms of both likelihood and occurrence.

Another tool that may help to inspire increased organization in genocide detection and response is the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViClass) database. ViCLAS is a national police database used for tracking both offenders and the offenses they commit. It is also designed as an automated case linkage system for the purpose of capturing, collating, and comparing violent crimes through analysis of victimology, offender/suspect descriptions, modus operandi, and forensic and behavioural data. The ViCLAS system has been successful at tracking predatory/mobile offenders, since it has served as a unifying information store across jurisdictions, and has increased and strengthened cooperative law enforcement endeavours.

In light of the challenges of early warning and cooperative response to genocide, the Sentinel Project has moved forward with the understanding that every potentially genocidal situation will be unique in its pattern of variables. This has informed our situation-of-concern (SOC) format. Additionally, our early warning system (EWS) architecture bears some similarity to VRAG and ViCLAS but will be continually fine-tuned as our research analysts gather more information and the technology team develops new ways of managing it. The Sentinel Project continues to embark this journey expecting to make full use of the tools at its disposal to fulfill its mandate. Stay tuned for future developments!

Troy Powell
Research Analyst at the Sentinel Project.

Members of the Sentinel Project in a work session in Toronto. Interested in being part of the effort? Get involved!

We have been making some good progress on developing our Early Warning System (EWS), a rigorous and transparent process for monitoring and predicting when a community is at risk of genocide. In the spirit of making our process “open source”, I am sharing some of the details of what we have so far. This post will be the first part of what will eventually be a three-part series.

I want to emphasize here that these details are only tentative and an early draft that we are iterating several times over. If this were a software product, we are not yet at the “Beta” stage.

The core of our concept is based on the eight stage model of genocide emergence developed by Gregory Stanton. At the macro level, this model characterizes genocide as emerging from a combination of eight operational processes: Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination, and Denial.

Our approach is to begin with this framework and develop an efficient way of characterizing the presence of these factors in a particular situation. We are dividing up the work into a multi-stage process.

Phase 1: Risk Factor Assessment

The first step is to conduct an annual or semi-annual “global review”, where we look over as many communities and regions of the world as possible and compare them against what is essentially a checklist of risk factors that would generally predispose a society towards genocidal violence – for example, the weakening of democratic institutions,  economic problems, or increases in ethnic grievances. We then focus on the communities with the greatest/strongest group of risk factors and formally initiate a ”Situation of Concern“ for each one. That leads us to the second stage of the process…

Phase 2: Situation of Concern monitoring

Each situation-of-concern (SOC) is a dedicated effort setup by us focused on a specific community or region that has been identified in our initial Risk Factor Assessment stage.

The goals of setting up the SOC are to:

1. Commit a team of analysts dedicated to maintaining a round-the-clock monitoring effort on the region

2. Begin a systematic process of disseminating situation updates and assessments (including warnings)

3. Actively begin establishing links with local community organizations and leaders within the at-risk country who can be both a source of data and also a point of distribution of our assessments and warnings

4. Establish a domestic distribution network of advocacy groups, community groups, media and other organizations and leaders within Canada, the United States, and Europe to whom we will broadcast our assessments and warnings

5. Develop strategies for action that can be offered as assistance to targeted community groups

The core process driving everything at this stage is the monitoring and assessment loop – we collect as much information as possible, and maintain a rolling assessment of how the risk of genocide is evolving in that region. To do this, we need two things:

1. A framework for storing and classifying all the information that we collect about a specific SOC into a “situation model” of that region

2. A framework for mapping our situation model to the “red flag model.” Essentially, there are specific signs and patterns that we are looking for that have typically been present ahead of  genocides in the past. If our situation model contains similar signs and patterns and maintains increasing consistency with these red flags, then we have increasing reason to believe that violence may be imminent.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are using the Eight Stage model of genocide. Based on this, we have started developing an classification matrix that allows us to code each incoming data point that we have about an SOC with multiple categories. These categories allow us to frame all of our knowledge about an SOC directly in the context of the Eight Stage model. For example, every data point will be coded to indicate which warning signs (and subsequently, which of the larger eight operational processes) of violence the data is supporting. This will allow us to build a situation model that is made up of groups of data points clustered by time and theme that evolve over time.

Below is a very early rough example of the sort of classification matrix that we are designing.

The challenges here are to properly capture and map the significance and meaning of each data point into our overall situation model. Some data points are going to be more reliable than others – for example an allegation heard in a conversation with an unreliable source versus photographic evidence of a particular event. Some data points are going to be more significant than others and must have a bigger impact on our model. And data points are going to help either support or oppose the presence of the eight operational processes that we are looking for in the situation – we need to therefore have an accurate way of reflecting data in our situational model that actively supports that a genocide is not likely to happen.

All this is independent of the people+software process that we need to enable this workflow. We need a set of software tools that lets us build these situation models easily and with low overhead. And we need  something that we can train up volunteers on easily, each time we setup a new SOC with a new team of analysts and translators.

In the next part of this series, I will discuss what we do once we have a basic situational model going – how do we decide when we have seen enough warning signs that there is an imminent risk of genocide? How do we decide when there is not such a risk and that the SOC should be discontinued? I will talk about intent and typology assessments and the challenges of communicating urgency when developing warnings.

Stay Tuned!

A position has become available for a fundraiser to join our team. This is a key position in our organization and en excellent opportunity for a motivated person to make a great contribution.

For a full position description, see the “Get Involved” page. Write to contact@thesentinelproject.org with any questions, or send in your resume to apply.

The University of Waterloo website has profiled the Sentinel Project since all of the founders were UW alumni. Check out the article here.

Caption from UW site: Christopher Tuckwood (left) has grown his undergrad campus activism into the Sentinel Projct for Genocide Prevention

Some volunteer opportunities opened up recently and we are looking for talented people with the right skills and commitment to genocide prevention to fill them. Three are available:

• Public Relations Coordinator – take on full responsibility for cultivating our public image
• Research Analyst – join our research team and assist in creating and applying the early warning model
• Outreach Coordinator – join our outreach team and build partnerships with other organizations

For full position descriptions, see the “Get Involved” page. Write to contact@thesentinelproject.org with any questions, or send in your resume to apply.

The Sentinel Project had a booth at the United We Rock! human rights concert held at Dundas Square in downtown Toronto yesterday. Unfortunately it was pretty terrible freezing wet and windy weather so we were not able to setup much of a booth:

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk to folks about our work later on in the summer in sunnier weather!

General Dallaire spoke about his experiences in Rwanda 16 years ago and the importance of increasing the will and capacity in government to respond to genocide today: