Most of wiki is patrolled by robots, I'd image if it was useful it would.

I'd see natural disasters possibly false positiving compared with turf wars between groups/countries after a flare up being the main reason you'd do it.

I think professors asking students to edit would be rare enough not to make it worth while.

As far as I'm aware, no. As far as I know, while IP's are logged, users with the "checkuser" privilege need to manually search and interpret the logs during each investigation.