Update Alert No. 8
3 November, 2011

UCDP Database/Conflict Encyclopedia

UCDP Database iPhone and Android app

The UCDP Database app is now also available for Android and the iPhone app has been updated. The app allows for searching offline among more than 300 armed conflicts and actors, more than 200 summaries of peace agreements, data on casualties and much more. The UCDP Database app includes information on events until and including 2010 and was developed in cooperation with Uppsala University.

The application for iPhones can be downloaded, for free, from Apple's iTunes store.

The application for Android can be downloaded, for free, from the Android Market.

UCDP Database becomes UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia

The UCDP Database has been renamed the UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia. The name change was made in order to further emphasize that UCDP’s vast amount of detailed descriptions on conflicts, actors, negotiations, peace agreements is useful for those who want to have descriptive background infromation as as well as case studies and comparative analysis. It continues to be available for free. The web address, ucdp.uu.se/database, remains the same.

Collaboration

The UCDP geocoding method applied to international aid

Over the last two years the system that UCDP developed for geocoding battles has been adapted to the field of international aid. UCDP has partnered with AidData, the premier source of project level aid data, to conduct the actual geocoding. Daniel Strandow, UCDP, and Michael Findley, AidData, jointly supervised the coding of aid commitments to Sub-Saharan Africa for all conflict years between 1989 and 2007. The researchers presented the Sub-Saharan Africa dataset in the latest issue of World Development, and made the findings accessible to policy-makers in a research brief. The dataset is scheduled for release this November.

So far the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the International Aid Transparency Initiative and the government of Malawi have successfully put our geocoding system to work.

Publications

New book uses UCDP data

The new book by Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, New York 2011, 802 pages) has created much attention, arguing that violence in the world is declining. Parts of his work rests of the Uppsala data, as well as on work at PRIO.

Coming updates

UCDP’s new geo-data will be released shortly!

The first version of the UCDP GED (Georeferenced Event Dataset), which contains a subset including the entirety of Africa, will be released early December this year. This dataset contains geographically and temporally disaggregated data for all of UCDP’s categories of violence between 1989 and 2010. The dataset responds to recent developments in research and the call for more disaggregated data.

The first version of the dataset will be in a point format, with the WGS84 datum for georeferencing. Other versions will follow shortly, including conflict and dyad polygons (conflict zones), as well as point data datasets for onset of armed conflicts, non-state conflicts and one-sided violence. The data is unique in its comprehensiveness and meets, as always, the strict quality criteria of UCDP. The dataset will be updated annually.

For more information, please visit the UCDP GED project page.