By Ryan Baird
[Editor’s note: The following announcement comes from Ryan Baird, a Political Scientist at the Joint Warfare Analysis Center.]
Call for Presentation Proposals: Forecasting in the Social Sciences for National Security
In recent years, the subject of forecasting has steadily increased inimportance as policy makers and academic researchers attempt to respond to changes in world events. Academic projects seeking to advance the state of the art in forecasting have a natural policy application with the potential for improving the world by helping to identify and respond to problems and opportunities before they fully emerge. On July 26th (Date may change slightly), National Defense University in Washington D.C. will host a small conference co-sponsored by U.S. Strategic Command to advance the state of the art in the in social science forecasting as applied to national security. The goal of this conference is to attract papers that engage in rigorous theoretical and empirical research on the application of forecasting to National Security problem sets. These papers should have a focus on applications that support policymakers, military planners, or the warfighter on the ground through forecasting of national security relevant events or decisions. Relevant examples include, but are definitely not limited to:
- Interstate or intrastate conflict initiation or termination
- The creation or abandonment of a WMD program
- Extra-legal attempts to seize control of a state, re-alignment of formal or informal alliances
- Methodological approaches may include, but are not limited to, large sample statistical analysis, laboratory experiments, field experiments, formal models and computer simulations.
Space is limited for this conference. Airfare and lodging expenses will be covered for all accepted presenters.
Additionally, we are to say that we have secured space in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation for a special issue. All accepted conference presenters will have their papers considered for the special issue.
As discussants for the conference we are fortunate enough to have:
Dr. Scott de Marchi of Duke University whose work focuses on mathematical methods, especially computational social science, machine learning, and mixed methods. Substantively, he examines individual decision-making in contexts that include the American Congress and presidency, bargaining in legislatures, interstate conflict, and voting behavior. He has been an external fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and the National Defense University and is currently a principal investigator for NSF’s EITM program.
Dr. Jay Ulfelder is a political scientist whose research interests includedemocratization, political violence, social unrest, state collapse, andforecasting methods. He has served as research director for the Political Instability Task Force, a U.S. government-funded research program that develops statistical models to forecast various political events around the world. He has spent most of the past three years working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide to develop the Early Warning Project, a public early-warning system for mass atrocities.
To propose a 12 minute presentation, to be followed by a paper submission for the special issue of JDMS, please email a title and abstract of no more than 300 words along with a short statement about why you are interested in this conference to Justin Duncliffe (justin.a.dunnicliff@ndu.edu ) by June 2.
Key Dates:
- June 2 – Deadline for presentation proposals
- June 16 – Decisions on conference acceptance and travel awards
- July 16 – Drafts of the accepted conference papers are due
- July 26 – (final date may move slightly in this week). – Conference takes place at National Defense University in Washington D.C.
- Dec 31 – final manuscript due for the special issue of the Journal ofDefense Modeling and Simulation
Papers submitted should not be concurrently under review at another journal, or similar venue.
The guest editors for the special issue will be:
- Dr. Scott de Marchi – Duke University
- Dr. Jay Ulfelder – Consultant
- Dr. Ryan Baird – U.S. Strategic Command
Please email Justin Duncliffe with any questions.