First public forecasts from ViEWS: a political Violence Early-Warning System
2018-06-08
The challenges of preventing, mitigating, and adapting to largescale political violence are daunting, particularly when violence escalates where it is not expected. With funding from the European Research Council, ViEWS is developing a system that is rigorous, data-based, and publicly available to researchers and the international community. On 7 June, ViEWS released its first public forecasts for Africa.
Africa, June 2018
The ViEWS project (2017–2021) is an ERC Advanced Grant project, led by Dag Hammarskjöld Professor Håvard Hegre. ViEWS assesses the risk of three forms of political violence: state-based armed conflict involving states and rebel groups, armed conflict between non-state actors, and violence against civilians. It makes available predictions for countries, sub-national geographical units, and actors. The predictions are systematically compared to what actually happened and models are revised to optimize predictions. The models’ performances are also evaluated and the results made public. ViEWS is committed to providing full transparency on data, documentation and source code. The current forecasts are based on data recorded by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).
- The principle of full transparency is very important to us, says Professor Håvard Hegre. There are already analytic tools based on intelligence information that are used by for example the UN. We have chosen to maximize transparency and only use open-source data in order to see how far it takes us. This means that we might not get the absolutely best warning system, but it will be the most open. That is our contribution.
Figure 1 shows the first ViEWS forecasts. The system suggests a continued high risk of conflict in Somalia, Nigeria, and other countries in Central Africa. Recent violence in other places, e.g. in Kenya, is forecasted to recede.
Along with optimizing evaluation procedures, the project is researching how to set up criteria that make the forecasts maximally useful. For instance, ViEWS will analyze the difficult trade-offs in forecasting efforts. An ability to correctly identify in advance a large proportion of conflict cases typically is associated with a large number of false alarms. ViEWS will contribute to the assessment of the costs and benefits of predictions and false alarms.
A new UCDP dataset with candidate UCDP-GED events aggregated to the ViEWS units of analysis will also be introduced during the launch. UCDP is widely recognized as the world-leading provider of conflict data.
Please visit http://pcr.uu.se/research/views/ for more detailed information.
News
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Stream the launch of "Societies at Risk"
2022-10-19
Did you miss the launch of Societies at Risk this spring and want to learn more about the team's upcoming research on the impacts of armed conflict on human development? You can now stream the recording from the event via the project's YouTube channel.
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Welcome to the launch of the new research project 'Societies at Risk' on 20 May 2022
2022-04-12
We are pleased to invite you to the launch of a new six-year research project at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research: ‘Societies at Risk: the Impact of Armed Conflict on Human Development’.
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RJ announces 39.7M SEK grant for 'Societies at Risk'
2022-02-09
Uppsala University awarded a 39.7M SEK grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) to study the effect of armed conflict on human development
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Call for applications: Programmer, Department of Peace and Conflict Research
2020-06-26
The Department of Peace and Conflict Research seeks a programmer to work with the project ViEWS and The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).
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Call for applications: Researcher, ViEWS
2020-02-06
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Prediction competition
2020-02-04
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ViEWS featured in the November/December issue of MIT Technological Review
2019-11-04
In the article 'We are finally getting better at predicting organized conflict', MIT Technological Review looks into advancements in the field of conflict prediction. The article features ViEWS and the Early Warning Project from the US Holocaust Museum and Dartmouth College.
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Open Access - ViEWS overview article in Journal of Peace Research
2019-06-27
ViEWS published its overview article in Journal of Peace Research 56(2), pp. 155–174. The article is openly available and can be accessed here.
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Policy Dialogue Day
2019-03-08
The Policy Dialogue Day is an event organized by the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute, the QoG (Quality of Government) Institute, GLD-Gothenburg (Program for Governance and Local Development), UCPD (Uppsala Conflict Data Program) and ViEWS (a Political Violence Early- Warning System). The conference aims to provide insight on questions relating to democracy and governance, and to serve as a meeting platform for practitioners, policy makers, and academics.
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New blog post in Monkey Cage: "U.N. peacekeeping really can be effective."
2018-06-28
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First public forecasts from ViEWS: a political Violence Early-Warning System
2018-06-08
The challenges of preventing, mitigating, and adapting to largescale political violence are daunting, particularly when violence escalates where it is not expected. With funding from the European Research Council, ViEWS is developing a system that is rigorous, data-based, and publicly available to researchers and the international community. On 7 June, ViEWS released its first public forecasts for Africa.
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Policy Dialogue Day
2018-04-19
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ViEWS welcomes new researcher
2017-10-10
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First annual ViEWS workshop
2017-09-27
ViEWS held its first annual workshop 25-26 September in Uppsala. The workshop consisted of a total of 30 participants who over the course of two days discussed forecasting advances in the field as well as within the project.
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Håvard Hegre receives the Lilly and Sven Thuréus award
2017-08-29
The Department congratulates Håvard Hegre who received the Lilly and Sven Thuréus award, the technical-economic class, on 29 August.
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Håvard Hegre elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science Letters
2017-05-03
Dag Hammarskjöld Professor Håvard Hegre was elected into the Norwegian Academy of Science Letters in March 2017.
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Kick-off meeting for the ViEWS project
2017-01-18
In the photo from the left: Lisa Hultman, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Desirée Nilsson,
Jonas Nordkvelle, Hanne Fjelde, Stina Högbladh, Nina von Uexkull, David Randahl,
Mihai Croicu, Håvard Hegre, Frederick Hoyles, Halvard Buhaug, Sayeed Auwn MuhammedThe ViEWS project started up with a kick-off meeting on 17–18 January. The project, directed by Håvard Hegre and involving Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman, Desiree Nilsson, as well as an international team of researchers, will develop, test, and iteratively improve a pilot Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS).
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Håvard Hegre elected Vice-President of the International Studies Association
2017-01-01
In the recent elections in the International Studies Association, Håvard Hegre, Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University was elected Vice-President for the 2018-19 term.