A Model of "Evil" for Course of Action Analysis

Military planners must consider the undesirable secondary effects of military operations, such as civilian casualties, physical infrastructure damage, and societal disruption. A quantitative model that can be used to evaluate and compare the intentional harm, or "evil," caused by alternati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Military operations research (Alexandria, Va.) Va.), 2013, Vol.18 (4), p.61-76
Main Authors: Reed, Gregory S., Tackett, Greg B., Petty, Mikel D., Ballenger, John P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calibration
Evil
Homelessness
Military operations
Missing persons
Modeling
Operations research
Parametric models
Term weighting
War casualties
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Summary:Military planners must consider the undesirable secondary effects of military operations, such as civilian casualties, physical infrastructure damage, and societal disruption. A quantitative model that can be used to evaluate and compare the intentional harm, or "evil," caused by alternative courses of action (COAs) would be useful to military planners. Two versions of a "Metric of 'Evil,'" a model of the harm associated with military COAs intended to allow the comparison of COAs on an ethical basis, have been developed. The models consider both the results of a COA and the intentions of those executing it. The models were experimentally validated by comparing their assessments with those of human experts with backgrounds in ethics, religion, political science, and military history. Pairwise comparisons of the relative evil of pairs of COAs from a set of selected historical events were made by four sets of raters: human experts, human nonexperts, the models, and random raters. Accuracy in these assessments was defined as cumulative agreement with the experts. One of the versions of the model agreed with the human experts over all situations aswell as all human raters. The results suggest that a quantitativemodel can capture the criteria and sensibilities used by human experts in assessing the evil associated with military courses of action.
ISSN:1082-5983
2163-2758
DOI:10.5711/1082598318461