Predicting Global Disposition Of U.S. Military Personnel Via Open-Source, Unclassified Means
Abstract
Demand of USTRANSCOM assets are subject to fluctuations due to unforeseen circumstances such as war, conflict, natural disasters, and other calamities requiring the presence of military personnel. This study evaluates the use of forecasting models to predict the number of military personnel expected by branch and country each year. The expectation by USTRANSCOM is that accurate forecasts for the number of military personnel in each country can be leveraged to develop alternative transportation workload forecasts of demand of USTRANSCOM assets. There was not a single model that performed best for all countries and branches of service. Each model was analyzed via the traditional 80/20 forecasting evaluation metric as well as a two-year horizon cross-validation metric. The exponential smoothing model with a high level of xB; performed quite well for many of the models, indicating that perhaps simpler models will still provide accurate forecasts. Further research is needed to determine whether incorporating forecasts of military personnel will improve the ability to forecast demand of USTRANSCOM assets.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 23, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1056423
Entities
People
- Matthew T Small
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology