Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Forecasting Country Conflict Within Modified Combatant Command Regions Using Statistical Learning Methods, Sarah Neumann

Theses and Dissertations

Conflict forecasts are crucial to Combatant Commanders’ understanding of the dynamic environment encompassing countries within their area of responsibility. The current structure of the Combatant Commands (COCOMs) is rooted in geography by grouping nations in geographic proximity to the same regional command. However, leaders today question the effectiveness of the current structure. A novel modified k-means clustering algorithm is developed and implemented that groups countries based on data similarities and geographic proximity resulting in new COCOM groupings that improve conflict forecasts. The data spans various political, military, economic, and social characteristics of countries, and is used to develop conditional logistic …