Monitoring Factors that Impact Operations using the PMESII Framework and Recorded Future

Monitoring factors that can impact your organization’s activities is always important to maintaining consistent, safe, and efficient operations; regardless of it you are a regional corporation or a military combatant command. One way to do that effectively is to break these potentially impactful factors down into operational variables and to apply the PMESII-PT framework to help understand, prevent, or mitigate their consequences.

 

The PMESII-PT Framework

According to United States’ Army Doctrine Publication ADP-5.0: The Operations Process, “Commanders and staffs use the eight interrelated operational variables — political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time (known as PMESII-PT) — to help understand an Operational Environment.”  These operational variables aid in the ability to understand their environment by analyzing relevant information pertaining to various military and non-military factors with the potential to impact their success. It's important to note, that while these variables were born out of military doctrine, they are also applicable to any organization planning or conducting operations or activities related to their business.

Recorded Future’s Geopolitical Intelligence Module contains applicable components to help analysts surface information pertaining to all eight of the variables in the PMESII-PT framework.  The PMESII-PT Operational Variables can easily be monitored by leveraging Recorded Future’s Watch Lists, Threat Views, and Risk Scores; the Global Issues Team’s Geopolitical Intelligence reporting, and elements of our Advanced Query.

 

Watch Lists, Threat Views, and Risk Scores:

The easiest way to monitor events related to the operational variables is to use the Locations Watch List.  The Watch List can contain countries, cities, or other locations relevant to the area where operations are or will be conducted. This also provides the benefit of being able to monitor events like coups, attacks (terrorist, military, or otherwise), and violent protests that could have a significant impact on operations by virtue of Recorded Future’s Location Risk Rules and Risk Scores (which are updated in real-time!).

Here’s an example of a Locations by Risk Level Threat View monitoring Global Risk: 

 

By using this Threat View, you can monitor risk triggered by specific events impacting the operational environment. Think of this as an army of researchers scouring the surface, deep, and dark web (Recorded Future’s 900k+ sources) that never takes a break or sleeps (24x7x365 automated collection and processing) for evidence something significant happened (Risk Rules) and raising their hands to let you know to look at THIS location (Risk Scores).  You are also able to create alerts from the Threat View panels which can send an email or mobile push notification within 5 minutes of a Risk Rule being triggered (or at longer intervals if desired).

Recorded Future’s Location Risk Rules will also help contextualize risk in the operational environment over time with the addition of our temporally-based Risk Rules and Risk Rules triggered on the multiple occurrences of events (one violent protest or one suicide bombing is bad, but multiple violent protests or suicide bombings is worse).

Here’s a snapshot of the complete list of Location Risk Rules Recorded Future monitors:

 


 

Any of these Risk Rules will produce a Risk Score depending on which Risk Rule was triggered.  This Risk Score can be easily investigated on Recorded Future’s Intelligence Cards.

Here’s an example of the City Intelligence Card for Tel Aviv on 14 May 2021:

 


 

Here we can see that the current Risk Score is 79 which is considered High. If we navigate a little further down the Intelligence Card, we can further investigate the 10 triggered Risk Rules:

 


You will notice the 60-day history of which severity levels were triggered per day which can help put current events into context against events in the last 2 months.  You can also see the basic context around the triggered Risk Rules such as the sources and most recent Tweet.  Each triggered Risk Rule will also have a pivot link that will take you to the Table View visualization to dig deeper into the supporting evidence.

 

Geopolitical Insikt Reporting

The Insikt Group’s Global Issues Team can also help monitor operational variables.  The Global Issues Team produces all the geopolitical Finished Intelligence on geopolitics, physical security, extremism, terrorism, and information operations in the Geopolitical Intelligence Module.

• Geopolitical Flash Event: Brief summary of a current geopolitical event.
• Geopolitical Intelligence Summary: Detailed analysis of significant geopolitical events and patterns.
• Geopolitical Profile: Summary profile of a geopolitical entity such as a piece of equipment, a political figure, or an organization.
• Geopolitical Threat Forecast: Forward-looking assessment regarding a geopolitical event that may occur.
• Geopolitical Validated Event: Concise validation by the Insikt Group of a geopolitical event that has taken place, such as a terrorist attack.

Finished Intelligence from the Global Issues Team is accessible on the Geopolitical Module’s home screen, on Intelligence Cards, and is even searchable using the Advanced Query Builder. The Global Issues Team also supports Analyst-On-Demand (AOD) if AOD Credits are purchased by the customer.

 

Using the Advanced Query Builder

The Geopolitical Intelligence Module also provides access to Recorded Future’s Advanced Query Builder which is the primary way to conduct specific queries tailored to surface relevant information from Recorded Future’s 75+ Billion references.

Event Types, Entity Types, Entity Categories, and Source Types are all elements of our Advanced Search capabilities that can support monitoring PMESII-PT Operational Variables in Recorded Future.

Here’s a quick breakdown of where Recorded Future overlaps with PMESII-PT (some elements will fall into multiple categories of operational variables):

 

Event Types
Political	Military	Economic	Social	Infrastructure	Information	Physical Environment	Time
Coup	Armed Attack	Arms Trade	Protest	Man-made Disaster	Public Safety Warning	Environmental Issue	Event Time*
Election	Military Maneuver	Environmental Issue	Environmental Issue	Traffic Accident	Mention	Natural Disaster	Publish Time*
Legislation	Terrorist Attack	Natural Disaster	Natural Disaster	Terrorist Attack		Disease Outbreak
Political Endorsement		Extinction	Extinction	Nuclear Material Transmission		Man-made Disaster
Political Event		Disease Outbreak	Disease Outbreak	Radiological Material Transmission		Extinction
Poll Result		Man-made Disaster	Person Threat
Voting Result		Terrorist Attack	Terrorist Attack
Person Threat		Nuclear Material Transmission
Terrorist Attack		Radiological Material Transmission
Arms Trade		Environmental Issue
Diplomatic Relations		Natural Disaster
Political Relations		Extinction
Extinction		Disease Outbreak

 

 

Entity Types
Political	Military	Economic	Social	Infrastructure	Information	Physical Environment	Time
Any Embassy	Any Military Base	Any Company	Any Emoji	Any Airport	Any Person	Any Continent	Event Time*
Any Province or State	Any Military Conflict	Any Industry	Any Hashtag	Any Facility	Any Organization	Any Region	Publish Time*
Any Organization	Any Vessel	Any Product	Any Username	Any Port/Harbor		Any Country
		Any Commodity	Any Twitter Handle	Any Military Base		Any City
		Any Technology				Any Neighborhood
		Any Vessel
Recorded Future also has curated Entity Categories containing hundreds for grouped entities in over 150 specific industries, economic sectors, and government sectors.

 

 

Source Types
Political	Military	Economic	Social	Infrastructure	Information	Physical Environment	Time
Government	Blog	Company & Industry	Mainstream News	Company & Industry	Blog	Blog	Event Time*
Non-Government Organization		Blog	Nouvelles	Blog	Mainstream News		Publish Time*
Blog		Financial Research	Forum - All		Financial Research
			Social Media
			Messaging Platforms
			Public Messaging
			Multimedia
			Blog
* Event Time and Publish TIme are fields you can set in an Advanced Query, not a specific Event, Entity, or Source Type.

 

There are numerous combinations of the way these elements can be combined to surface information. Here is an example of a Timeline Visualization depicted events relevant to PMESII Operational Variables for the last 4 weeks related to Colombia:

 


Note how in this visualization, we have each operational variable displayed on its own timeline.  This allows us to compare the occurrence of different events over time, revealing the interconnection of the operational variables from one event to another. This view can also be annotated, shared inside of Recorded Future or outside of it, or even exported as a picture, Powerpoint file, or PDF document.  Alerts can also be created with the same parameters that produced this visualization.

 

Bottom Line:

The PMESII-PT framework has demonstrated value to U.S. Army commanders and their staffs to visualize Operational Variables to facilitate situational awareness during the Operations Process. This framework can be applied to monitoring important factors and variables that can affect not only military but non-military (corporate, commercial) operations. Recorded Future’s Geopolitical Intelligence Modules’s emphasis on Location Monitoring and other core features can help surface information and intelligence related to political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, information, the physical environment, and time pertaining to any operation.