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.
If it’s entirely media-based, what does IBC provide that the media itself does not?
- Major commercial media rely almost exclusively on their own in-house reporting, thus limiting their scope
- As a non-profit organisation, IBC is able to operate across commercial boundaries to integrate data from multiple sources
- IBC makes full use of emergent information technologies for remote collaboration and data collection
- This creates a new product from existing data streams
- IBC is, in effect, an aggregator and integrator of material which is dispersed over many locations