Published on: 26 April 2023 | Last updated: 1 November 2023
The various data columns, such as the ‘Actor’, ‘Event type’, and ‘Disorder type’ columns, can be used to filter events by specific event types and actors. The ‘Tags’ column can be used to filter events by specific trends that ACLED currently tracks. While most tags are used to track regional- or country-specific trends, some are coded across all regions (e.g. the set of tags tracking political violence targeting women). See this page for the full list of tags currently coded by ACLED.
The ‘Notes’ column contains more detailed descriptions that may allow for heuristic filtering based on keywords — though please keep in mind that the ‘Notes’ column is qualitative and not standardized, meaning that keyword searches may yield false positives and/or may omit true positives. In addition, ACLED provides a range of curated datasets for different regions and themes, such as violence targeting or involving specific actor types. For the full list of ACLED data columns and their descriptions, see the ACLED Codebook.
