Where does Neil Buhne get his numbers from? ?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_re_as/sri_lanka_civil_war;_ylt=AhXtfmVL68HUDQBmjIx_LpsBxg8F

Answer 1

I understand that he is very good at determining this information.  He worked for the UN in Sudan during the famine in the late 1980's and earned respect by being able to gauge the populations of refugees who were constantly on the move.  The UN needed to know where to send the food aid to in order to reach the starving people rather than just the corrupt army. He and his colleagues would constantly update information from a number of sometimes conflicting sources and then verify it.  They can judge the statistical credibility of different sources using past information.  In the past the UN would get information from airplanes, while now they may use high resolution aerial photographs.  Aid workers or pilots would count refugees from the air.  They also use historical population data and sources on the ground.

Different sides in a conflict always try to fudge refugee numbers one way or the other, but experts with the UN become skilled at figuring out the truth between two different population calculations.  They strive for non-partisan accuracy.  Mistakes can still be made, but published numbers will often be rounded or will reflect the range of accuracy.