Project Leader

Ralph Sundberg, Ph.D Candidate

Project Period

Ongoing

Contact Person

Ralph Sundberg

Project Page

The UCDP GED has its own project page, with interactive maps, downloads and more. Please visit

http://ucdp.uu.se/ged

Project Description

Following the increase in demand from scholars of armed conflict to have access to reliable disaggregated data, the UCDP decided in February 2009 to convert all of its conflict- and dyad-level calendar-year data into a geo-referenced event data format.

The project’s first phase encompasses the conversion of annual data from the 1989-2010 time period in all three of the UCDP’s categories of organised violence: state-based armed conflict (1), non-state conflict (2) and one-sided violence (3). The dataset will, thereafter, be continuously updated annually.

The purpose of this project is to provide the academic community with the most comprehensive georeferenced event data available on organised violence in the post-1989 world, so as to answer the call for geographically and temporally disaggregated data. The data produced will be useable in both traditional statistical programs, as well as in GIS software.

The project’s end product is the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP GED), a dataset which will be global, but also contain specific regional subsets. Several derivatives, such as conflict polygons will also be made available as they are produced within the project.

The first version of the UCDP GED, which contains a subset including the entirety of Africa, was released 8 December 2011. The first version of the dataset is in a point format, with the WGS84 datum for georeferencing. The first derivative dataset, the UCDP GED Conflict Polygons was released on 28 March 2012, with more derivative datasets to follow.

For more information and for downloading the dataset, please visit the UCDP GED dataset page.

A comparison of coverage and quality of UCDP GED to ACLED can be found in the following article: Eck, Kristine (2012) "In Data We Trust? A Comparison of UCDP GED and ACLED Conflict Events Datasets," Cooperation and Conflict 47(1): forthcoming.

Publications

Publications using the 1.0 beta version

Eck, Kristine (2012) "In Data We Trust? A Comparison of UCDP GED and ACLED Conflict Events Datasets," Cooperation and Conflict 47(1): forthcoming.

Melander, Erik, and, Ralph Sundberg, 2011, “Climate Change, Environmental Stress. and Violent Conflict -Tests introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, March 16-19, Montreal, Canada

Fjelde, Hanne, and Lisa Hultman, 2011, “Killing Civilians in Civil War: Testing Competing Theories with Geo-referenced Data”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, March 16-19, Montreal, Canada

Forsberg, Erika, Gudrun Østby, and Monica Duffy Toft, 2011, “Differential Population Dynamics, Inequality and Political Violence in India”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, March 16-19, Montreal, Canada

Melander, Erik, and Tomislav Dulic, 2010, “Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia 1992-1995: AN Analysis Using New Disaggregated Data”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, 17-20 February, New Orleans, USA

Hultman, Lisa, 2010, “Political Power and Poppy Plants: Using Events Data to Explore the Mechanisms of Violence in Afghanistan”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, 17-20 February, New Orleans, USA

Forsberg, Erika, 2010, “Is There a Link between Elections and Violent Episodes in
the Northeast of India? Analyzing Events Data Covering 1989‐2008”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, 17-20 February, New Orleans, USA

Melander, Erik, and Ralph Sundberg, 2010, "More Mouths and Less Food - Climate Change, Resource Scarcity and Non-state Conflicts", Paper presented at 7th SGIR Conference, September 9-11, Stockholm, and presented to the Uppsala Forum Workshop on Global Climate Change, September 2010