Geographers Had Predicted Osama's Possible Whereabouts

Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, were none too shabby. According to a probabilistic model they created, there was an 88.9% chance that bin Laden was hiding out in a city less than 300 km from his last known location in Tora Bora: a region that included Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed last night

news.sciencemag.org...

I dont know if this is an anomaly or if its indicative if the effectiveness of this methodology but its fascinating that a group of students could use a little creativity and come up with results this accurate.

reply to post by SirMike


Think they can help me find my car keys.. Really, math is a powerful tool.

i reckon he just filled in the census form we had a little while ago, ooops.

The article also says an inconspicuous house would have served him better. That's an interesting point. The house he was in was hardly inconspicous. It looked like a fortress and was out of place in the town itself. Anybody looking at it would have had to think, "Wow! I wonder who's inside that thing."

I suspect that Pakistan, the government, or at least the intelligence service, knew he was there and supported his presence, but I don't understand how they could have thought no one else would think the place was conspicuous. Once our intelligence narrowed it to the city it had to have been fairly obvious. And satellite technology can take pictures of flys on bannisters. Surely OBL & Co knew that.

I guess the easiest answer is Occams Razor. They screwed up. Hiding in plain site didn't work after all.