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.
4. Timeliness
- Media is generally fastest to report deaths and incidents (usually within 12 hours), but not itself to aggregate or analyse these events.
- IBC is currently capable of providing preliminary aggregated data within 48 hours.1
- However, full analysis by IBC takes longer. Except for those entries which require additional work, analysis is generally complete within one month (the unanalysed backlog can approach, but rarely exceeds, 10% of total reported deaths at any one time).2
1 The Recent Events section of the IBC website provides these preliminary reports.
2 Substantial backfilling has been performed by IBC since early May 2007, when this was written, and the general lead-times have also been reduced (to around two weeks as of November 2007).