The 2009 hostage rescue by US Navy SEALs off the coast of Somalia made the media focus attention on the growing threat of piracy to international shipping in the Horn of Africa. Palantir have applied their advanced analysis capabilities to data published by the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, as well as open source news reports. The analysts at Palantir then focused on geo-temporal patterns of attacks, as well as the financing network of the Central Regional Coast Guard, a federation of Somali pirates to create an amazing analysis of the events.
The second video on the page, about the Gulf of Aden, shows the dramatic increase in piracy in the area beginning in 2008 and continuing to the present. With Palantir’s advanced visualization capabilities, a couple of interesting patterns emerge:
- Before the fall of 2008, piracy events were somewhat scattered in the eastern end of the Gulf.
- Beginning in August 2008, there is a surge of attacks that occur in a band about 60 km off the Yemeni coast.
- In mid-February 2009, a new band begins to appear another 50 km further out into the Gulf.
It’s possible that shipping companies shifted the shipping lane in response to the surge in piracy along the original route.
What are your thoughts of this types of analysis of monumental proportion? How will governments (Palantir’s largest market segment) use Palantir’s tools for the better good?
