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Cited by 173Political Conflict and GovernanceTerrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political ViolencePeacebuilding and International Security

ViEWS: A political violence early-warning system

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Hegre, Håvard, Allansson, Marie, Basedau, Matthias, Colaresi, Michael, Croicu, Mihai, Fjelde, Hanne, Hoyles, Frederick, Hultman, Lisa +13 more·2019·Journal of Peace Research
DOI 10.1177/0022343319823860
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Abstract

This article presents ViEWS – a political violence early-warning system that seeks to be maximally transparent, publicly available, and have uniform coverage, and sketches the methodological innovations required to achieve these objectives. ViEWS produces monthly forecasts at the country and subnational level for 36 months into the future and all three UCDP types of organized violence: state-based conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence in Africa. The article presents the methodology and data behind these forecasts, evaluates their predictive performance, provides selected forecasts for October 2018 through October 2021, and indicates future extensions. ViEWS is built as an ensemble of constituent models designed to optimize its predictions. Each of these represents a theme that the conflict research literature suggests is relevant, or implements a specific statistical/machine-learning approach. Current forecasts indicate a persistence of conflict in regions in Africa with a recent history of political violence but also alert to new conflicts such as in Southern Cameroon and Northern Mozambique. The subsequent evaluation additionally shows that ViEWS is able to accurately capture the long-term behavior of established political violence, as well as diffusion processes such as the spread of violence in Cameroon. The performance demonstrated here indicates that ViEWS can be a useful complement to non-public conflict-warning systems, and also serves as a reference against which future improvements can be evaluated.

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  • Conflict onset is notoriously difficult to predict in general as it is a very rare event, providing an additional explanation for why onset studies yield weaker results.

    “We emphasize, however, that conflict onset is notoriously difficult to predict in general as it is a very rare event (174), providing an additional explanation for why onset studies yield weaker results in this field of inquiry.”

    From Vicious Circles: Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change (2021) · cites this paper as [174]

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Authors
Hegre, H., Allansson, M., Basedau, M., Colaresi, M., Croicu, M., Fjelde, H., Hoyles, F., Hultman, L., Högbladh, S., Jansen, R., Mouhleb, N., Muhammad, S. A., Nilsson, D., Nygård, H. M., Olafsdottir, G., Petrova, K., Randahl, D., Rød, E. G., Schneider, G., von Uexkull, N., & Vestby, J.
Affiliations
  • Uppsala University (SE)
  • Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
  • Peace Research Institute Oslo (NO)
Corresponding author
Hegre, Håvard
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Peace Research
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2019-02-15
Volume
56
Issue
2
Pages
155-174
ISSN
  • 0022-3433 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-3578
DOI
10.1177/0022343319823860
OpenAlex
W2914509225
Cited by
173
References
60
Citations by year
2026: 31 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 3
FWCI
35.22
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Peace Research (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Uppsala University Publications (Uppsala University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Social Science Open Access Repository (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
Funders
European Research Council (694640)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Peacebuilding and International Security
Keywords
political violence, early warning systems, conflict prediction, one-sided violence, ensemble forecasting, conflict persistence, Africa, southern Cameroon, northern Mozambique

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