User:Vipul/Armed Conflict Location and Events Data Project

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) is a project that collates data on armed conflict events, from 1997 to the present. The focus is on Africa, though partial data for some South Asian countries is also available.

Team and history
ACLED is directed by Prof. Clionadh Raleigh and operated by Caitriona Dowd, both affiliated with the University of Sussex and the data collection is led by research analyst Charles Vannice. The dataset was introduced by Raleigh and co-authors in a 2010 paper in the Journal of Peace Research. The data was originally hosted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (but was, even at the time, distinct from the UCPD/PRIO Armed Conflict data set) but later moved to an independent home.

Data
ACLED data for African countries is available starting January 1997 and is updated in real-time, and the real-time monthly data can be downloaded from the website. Data for non-African states is available 1997-2010, with the exception of Pakistan and Afghanistan, for which data is available only for 2006-2009. Real-time coding of data for South Asia was recommenced in 2014. ACLED also publishes a codebook. Additionally, maps and trend charts are available at the publications section of the ACLED website.

The ACLED data is also available under the "Climate Change and African Political Stability" section of the website of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reception in blogs on political violence and data analysis
Political scientist, data analyst, and forecaster Jay Ulfelder blogged about his experience trying to use the ACLED to see if it added predictive power in estimating the probability of coups, and explained both how he approached the problem and why he eventually concluded that the ACLED data did not add predictive power for coup forecasting. A post by Thomas Zeitzoff at the Political Violence at a Glance blog listed the ACLED as one of several "high-profile datasets." Patrick Meier blogged about it at irevolution.net

Reception in the news media
ACLED has been referenced by the New York Times, National Geographic, The Economist, and The Atlantic.