Expeditionary Modeling for Population-Centric Operations in Megacities: Some Initial Experiments

Fueled by globalization and urbanization, megacities are extreme exemplars of complex, population-centric operating environments by virtue of their size, density, complexity, and dynamism. These likely epicenters of future instability make them probable locations of future military operations. As the epitome of complex, population-centric operating environments, megacities and other dense urban areas are of increasing interest to the US military, particularly the Army. Today, course of action analysis for operations in these environments is limited by the availability of analyst expertise, relevant data, and time. This paper presents a future vision of Expeditionary Modeling in which ensembles of diverse computational models are rapidly assembled, tailored, and brought to bear to quantitatively characterize the likely direct and indirect effects of Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic (DIME) actions in these environments. This paper describes some preliminary experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of this model-based approach, leveraging extant models for human and urban terrain.