Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.
This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.
Data points and their percent coverage
Of 8,000 incidents and 47,000 victims in the IBC database (excluding IBC’s non event-specific entries such as cumulative deaths recorded at morgues):
| Incident Town Name | 98.9% |
| Cause of deaths (weapons) | 95.3% |
| Aggressor (killers) | 31.3% |
| Number Injured | 81.9% |
| Victim Sex | 32.6% |
| Victim Age | 34.3% |
| Victim Occupation | 12.9% |
The table above shows percent coverage for some key variables across a segment of 8,000 incidents in the IBC data base. This shows that the location is almost always given, to the level of town; likewise the cause of death (weapon). Much less frequently reported is the victim occupation. This is because such information is frequently simply not known (as when a body is found with no identification or uniform).
Nonetheless, it is notable that, given the number of incidents and the pressures on reporting time and space, journalists still do very often try to humanise their reports with what details about age, gender, and other personal information they can gather.