Since its original introduction as a small-scale academic project in 2010 covering political violence in Africa (Raleigh et. al, 2010), the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) has evolved into an independent NGO with a global team of researchers collecting real-time data on political violence and demonstrations across the world. By mid-2020, nearly…
ACLED classifies Explosions/Remote violence events as asymmetric violent events aimed at creating asymmetrical conflict dynamics by preventing the target from responding. A variety of tactics are considered Explosions/Remote violence including bombs, grenades, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), artillery fire or shelling, missile attacks, heavy machine gun fire, air or drone strikes, chemical weapons, and suicide bombings.…
The ACLED dataset contains nearly 18,000 events of mob violence as of March 2019. A ‘mob violence’ event involves one or more groups of unorganized, unarmed but violent individuals engaging in political disorder. ACLED defines a mob, in line with the Oxford dictionary, as ‘a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and…
ACLED has debuted new event types to make analysis for users easier and more informative, and has also added a NEW sub-event type variable, which disaggregates event types further to allow for more nuanced analysis. An updated codebook reflecting these changes can be accessed here. These new event types include: Battles: a violent interaction between…
Sessions at the Tableau Conference (#TC18) presented ideas around new data visualization schemes to portray trends and patterns in novel ways. The dashboards below highlight a few of these data visualization ideas using ACLED data from across regions. The Marimekko chart allows for comparing the proportion of EAO violent engagement while also understanding where it…
In today’s world, external actors are more often intervening in conflicts globally; more domestic armed conflicts have involved external states’ direct intervention in recent years than in any year since the end of World War II. This is especially the case in the Middle East, in which this internationalization is how foreign military power is…
ACLED codes events ‘atomically’ meaning that an event (ACLED has 9 types of events) occurs on a specific day in a specific location involving specific actors. If a battle extends for more than one day, each day the battle is reported to have occurred is coded separately. Hence, each event has a source that notes…
Strong state capacity is difficult to attain in low-income countries where the state lacks access to resources to aid in effectively implementing policies. As a result, incomes are often used as a proxy measurement to determine the strength of state capacity, and states with lower incomes experience some of the highest levels of conflict (see:…
ACLED has compiled a list of select publicly available political violence datasets offering data at the national-level. This table — found below — can also be downloaded here. For a list of select publicly available political violence datasets offering data at the regional-level, see the blog post on this topic. https://www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Conflict-Datasets-Typology-Overview-National.pdf
ACLED has compiled a list of select publicly available political violence datasets offering data at the regional-level. This table — found below — can also be downloaded here. For a list of select publicly available political violence datasets offering data at the national-level, see the blog post on this topic. https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Conflict-Datasets-Typology-Overview-Regional-2.pdf