FAQ: ACLED’s new data structure, terms, and platforms

ACLED’s Aggregated Data

• What are ACLED’s aggregated data types?

In our aggregated data, our individual events are aggregated by time and geography. We offer three initial variations on aggregated data: all members can access global, real-time information available by week, by country and first order administrative units and aggregated events within. 

The weekly-admin aggregated data file looks like this:

Other options are a month-country dataset providing the total number of  events and fatalities broken down by country, aggregated by month (and updated weekly); and a year-country dataset providing the total number of  events and fatalities broken down by country, aggregated by year. Both the month-country and year-country datasets are available at the Humanitarian Data Exchange.

• How are the weekly-admin aggregated data structured?

The aggregated data files are organized by week-country-admin 1-event type. The events and fatalities numbers are respectively the sum of all events and fatalities recorded in the ACLED event dataset for that week in that admin 1 and for that sub-event type.

In addition, the population exposure column provides the best aggregated estimate of people exposed to any events that week in that admin 1 of that sub-event type. Finally, a centroid coordinate is provided for the administrative district to map these events. 

ACLED uses a hierarchical type structure, starting with three broad disorder types: political violence, demonstrations, and strategic developments. Each contains more specific event types — such as “Battles,” “Riots,” and “Violence against civilians” — and sub-event types that further break down the types of violence and disorder recorded. 

• How will I download the weekly-admin aggregated data?

Initially, you can download a file on the ACLED website. Soon thereafter, ACLED will introduce a system that allows users to choose aggregation parameters including time, geography, event types, and conflict categories. To download the data, please visit the Aggregated Data page.

• How can I use aggregated data?

You can use aggregated data in the same ways as you would the local, daily event data. You can select specific event types (e.g., “Protests”) and look at rates over time, and you can compare violent and peaceful actions across geography and time, or in response to other factors. You can map these data using the administrative centroid latitude and longitude. You can add these to other datasets with a matched temporal and  geographic scale. You can look at change, increases or decreases in intensity, frequency or demographic exposure over time, or geography. For more, see Using ACLED aggregated data.

ACLED’s Latent Event Data

• What is ACLED’s latent data?

Latent data refers to event data that are available with a 12-month delay. 

• Who can access it? 

For the Research access tier, event data are available with a 12-month delay and are updated on a rolling basis. 

• How are the latent data structured?

Latent event data are structured the same way as all ACLED event data. The full list of ACLED data columns is available in the Codebook. The fundamental unit of observation of all ACLED data (including the latent event data) is the event. Events involve designated actors — e.g., a named rebel group, a militia, or state forces. ACLED currently records six event types and 25 sub-event types, both violent and non-violent. Sub-event types are also categorized by three overarching disorder types to facilitate analysis: 1): “Political violence,” “Demonstrations,” and “Strategic developments.” The full list of ACLED event types, sub-event types, and disorder types are available in the Codebook. Events occur at a specific named location (identified by name and geographic coordinates) and on a specific day. Researchers work to ensure that the most specific possible location and time are recorded. 

• How precise are the coded dates and locations?

ACLED indicates the level of temporal and spatial precision for each event in designated additional columns. See the Codebook for more information on time precision and spatial precision.

ACLED Conflict Categories

• Why is ACLED introducing new conflict categories? 

ACLED is introducing a set of new, user-focused conflict categories designed to make ACLED data more accessible and actionable. Each term captures a broad conflict dynamic — state repression, rebel insurgency, atrocities against civilians, terrorist activity, or foreign military engagement — using consistent and transparent criteria grounded in event type, actor behavior, and other key attributes in the dataset.

While ACLED maintains a detailed and rigorous coding structure, there is a growing need to complement this with more widely understood conflict categories that reflect how users interpret and apply the data. These categories do not replace ACLED’s existing event or sub-event types but instead offer an additional layer of categorization based on user demand and practical application.

• What are ACLED’s new conflict categories?

These categories will be available for event data from 2020 onward, including new data added on a weekly basis. Members will have the option to download data files containing all events for each conflict category below: 

1. Repression
2. Insurgency
3. Atrocities
4. Terrorist activity
5. Foreign military engagement

• How are these conflict categories defined?

Repression: Repression consists of all political violence events that include an interaction between state forces (actor type 1) and civilians or peaceful protesters (actor type 7 or 6, respectively), across any disorder type except for Strategic Developments. This typically includes sub-event types like “Abductions/forced disappearances,” “Excessive force against protesters,” or “Sexual violence,” offering a consistent lens into state-based repression across countries and time.

Insurgency: To define insurgencies, ACLED leveraged its actor interaction codes, specifically identifying all events involving rebel groups, and at least one group coded as ACLED’s interaction code 2 (rebel group). Unlike traditional measures of armed conflict that consider only battle events, our approach includes all forms of rebel activity —  enabling ACLED users to isolate and monitor the evolution and scope of insurgencies globally.

Atrocities: Using ACLED’s existing categorization of “Violence targeting civilians” (VTC), atrocities are those VTC events with 10 or more reported fatalities. Considering that ACLED employs a conservative methodology for coding fatalities, this threshold distinguishes mass killing events from isolated events with a low number of fatalities. The definition aims to be conservative yet sensitive to significant escalations in violence.

Terrorist activity: ACLED defines terrorist activity through an actor-based two-step process. First, we calculate the global baseline for VTC as a proportion of all political violence events involving named non-state actors in a given year. Second, any non-state armed group (or external military force) that exceeds this VTC rate and is involved in at least 50 political violence events during the same year will be designated as a terrorist group. Once an actor is designated as a terrorist group, all political violence events involving that actor, including engagements with state forces and other armed groups, are tagged as terrorist activity. This tag allows users to investigate the entire scope of violent activity involving the actor. Terrorist group designations are assigned on a per-country and per-year basis and recalculated annually.

Foreign military engagement: Foreign military engagement covers violent actions and strategic developments committed by state forces outside of their own territory. This includes the actions by international coalitions, military alliances and international military operations. The category covers inter-state and cross-state conflicts as well as states engaging non-state armed actors and civilians outside of their domestic territory.

Consult our Knowledge Base for more on conflict categories.

ACLED’s Tools and Platforms 

We have introduced different access levels as part of our new membership platform - for more information about what Tools and Platforms are available to you, please see myACLED. 

• What is CAST?

The ACLED Conflict Alert System (CAST) is a conflict forecasting tool that predicts political violence events up to six months in the future for every country in the world. Updated predictions are released each month for the following six months, alongside accuracy metrics for previous forecasts. Every month, ACLED CAST produces a report highlighting key conflict developments and significant predictions for the coming months.

• What is the Conflict Index?

The ACLED Conflict Index is a global assessment of how and where conflicts in every country and territory in the world vary according to four indicators — deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion, and the number of armed groups. 

Using political violence event data for the past 12 months, the ACLED Index identifies the top 50 countries or territories with the highest scores on each of these four individual indicators. . It also classifies each listed country or territory’s overall level of conflict as extreme, high, or turbulent based on its combined score across the four indicators.

• What is Explorer?

ACLED Explorer is an interactive platform that shows trends in conflict events, fatalities, and populations exposed to conflict over time, allowing viewers to explore specific conflict categories including repression, insurgency, atrocities, and terrorism globally.

ACLED Explorer also includes country profiles where viewers can see which events had the highest impact on civilians and can easily identify countries facing similar risks. The Explorer helps decision-makers quickly access the information needed to track developments, assess risks, and design more targeted responses. For our Partner and Enterprise tiers, this platform also enables curated data files to be directly downloaded. 

• What is Trendfinder?

ACLED Trendfinder allows members to monitor, visualize, and map near-real-time trends and changes in the most recent ACLED data. It helps users track how conflict dynamics are shifting by country, region, actor, or conflict type.

• What is a Conflict Monitor?

ACLED’s Conflict Monitors provide near-real-time data on political violence and protest mapped for select regions or countries. 

• Will the Codebook change to include the new terminology and aggregated data?

Yes, the Codebook and Knowledge Base will introduce and document these additional offerings.