These United Nations country teams, plus the NGOs that do complementary work at the grass-roots level, will have been in the region long before a complex peace operation arrives and will remain after it has left. Together, they hold a wealth of local knowledge and experience that could be helpful to peace operations planning and implementation. GIS specialists should be assigned to every mission team, together with GIS training resources. Current examples of GIS applications can be seen in the humanitarian and reconstruction work done in Kosovo since 1998. The Humanitarian Community Information Centre has pooled GIS data produced by such sources as the Western European Satellite Centre, the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Demining, KFOR, the Yugoslav Institute of Statistics and the International Management Group.
Computer simulations can be powerful learning tools for mission personnel and for the local parties.
Simulations can, in principle, be created for any component of an operation. They can facilitate group problem-solving and reveal to local parties the sometimes unintended consequences of their policy choices. With appropriate broadband Internet links, simulations can be part of distance learning packages tailored to a new operation and used to pre-train new mission recruits. Varying levels of security access could facilitate the sharing of sensitive information among restricted groups. POE could easily contain all administrative, procedural and legal information for peace operations, and could provide single-point access to information generated by many sources, give planners the ability to produce comprehensive reports more quickly and improve response time to emergency situations.