tell a friend
We are planning to make a few changes to the presentation of the Air Strike Tracker, and we wanted to allow friends of the project to weigh in on the discussion.
Our initial approach was to only include air strikes that affected civilians. "Affected" typically means that civilians were killed or injured by a strike, but a small number of incidents were added that had no reported casualties - e.g. a hostpital or a Red-cross food supply building was bombed.
However, since the project has launched, we have gotten a little lax on our own rule. We have added a few strikes where an insurgent leader was killed with no civilian casualties. This shift happened in part because the project has taken an increased interest in chronicling the rising use of unmanned aerial vehicles (a.k.a. UAVs or drones), and the strike tracker became a great tool for showing this trend.
The problem with our new, less strict, policy is that it has skewed the strike tracker's timeline. Our original data set had a more narrow focus. As a result, the new data gives the impression that air strike usage is on the rise, where in fact it has been reduced in recent months - particularly since McChrystal ordered a cut back in the use of air power in Afghanistan in June, 2009.
Our current plan is to add some sort of a switch to the user interface that will allow users to see ALL incidents tracked if they want to. By default, it will only show strikes affecting civilians.
Let us know your thoughts. How would you prefer to be able to view airstrikes without civilian casualties? Are there other features you would like us to add to the strike tracker? We plan on implementing the new changes in early March - any feedback is much appreciated!