INT-08
Reading Your Ground
Pattern of Life Analysis for Community Intelligence
Every community has a normal — a rhythm of movement, infrastructure behavior, and human activity that plays out day after day. That normal is your most powerful intelligence asset. This course teaches you to document it deliberately, recognize meaningful deviations from it, and translate those observations into reporting products that directly support community-level situational awareness and post-incident SITREP development.
Course Lessons
Covers the doctrinal basis for pattern-of-life analysis, the distinction between trained and untrained observation, what this course teaches, and how each lesson is structured.
- Why baselines are the prerequisite for deviation analysis
- What “normal” means in intelligence tradecraft
- Trained vs. untrained observation, and why the difference is method, not attention
- Course structure across all five lessons
Covers all four baseline domains in depth and how to build a collection framework that prioritizes them by threat relevance, collection capacity, and existing observation points.
- Domain 1: Human Activity Patterns
- Domain 2: Infrastructure and Lifeline Behavior
- Domain 3: Vehicle and Movement Patterns
- Domain 4: Communications and Network Signatures
- Building a prioritized collection framework
Covers the three core analytical tools that turn field observations into trend intelligence, plus the three-level deviation threshold framework that governs when to escalate.
- Tool 1: The Activity Register
- Tool 2: The Pattern Analysis Plot Sheet
- Tool 3: The Event Template
- NOMINAL / AMBER / RED deviation threshold framework
- Maintaining baseline integrity over time
Covers the three primary cascade chains relevant to community-level analysis, and how concurrent multi-domain deviations elevate a collection of AMBER observations to a RED intelligence picture.
- Why single-domain thinking misses connected signals
- Cascade Chain 1: Supply Disruption
- Cascade Chain 2: Civil Unrest Onset
- Cascade Chain 3: Infrastructure Failure
- Building a Cascade Watch List for your area
Covers the Spot Report (SALUTE format, adapted) for immediate deviation reporting and the Pattern of Life Summary for periodic baseline updates — the two products that make INT-08 collection actionable.
- Format 1: The Spot Report (SALUTE, adapted)
- Format 2: The Pattern of Life Summary
- Integration with the Community SITREP process
- Reporting discipline: observations vs. conclusions, attribution, closing the loop
Prerequisites
None required. INT-08 is self-contained and accessible to students at any point in the curriculum. Students who have completed INT-11 (Intelligence Cycle) will have useful context for where pattern-of-life analysis fits. Students who have completed INT-07 (OAKOC) will recognize the terrain and environment framing. Neither is required.
Doctrinal Sources
What This Course Is Built From
- FM 34-2-1 — Reconnaissance and Surveillance. Primary source for the four baseline domains and the Pattern Analysis Plot Sheet format.
- FM 2-22.3 — HUMINT Collection Operations, Chapters 3 and 8. Source for area assessment doctrine and the Activity Register and Event Template formats.
- Camp X SOE Training Manual (STS 103) — Observation and surveillance sections.
- FEMA Community Lifelines framework — Basis for the infrastructure and lifeline behavior domain’s integration with PLN-01.