This page provides the core spatial building blocks behind VIEWS’ forecasting capabilities, available as shapefiles and indexing tables for replicating analysis at both country and 0.5° grid scales.
Country-level Material
Shapefiles and metadata that underpin VIEWS’ country-level forecasts. Enables replication analysis and data visualization at national scale.
Grid-level Material
Shapefiles and metadata that underpin VIEWS’ grid-level forecasts. Enables fine-grained replication analysis and data visualization at 0.5° grid scale.
Temporal Units
Tables matching VIEWS’ temporal units (month IDs) with applicable calendar months and years.
Country-Level Material
The list of countries included in the VIEWS datasets is derived from the Gleditsch & Ward (1999) list of independent states. The geographic extents thereof (as well as the country IDs by which the VIEWS data are presented) are determined by the GIS dataset CShapes v.0.6 (Weidmann, Kuse & Gleditsch, 2010).
Please note that the choice of country set and delimitations thereof was made on methodological grounds and does not reflect the views or opinions of the VIEWS team.
Country ID Table
Includes mapping from VIEWS’ country IDs to ISO codes, Gleditsch–Ward codes, capital names and coordinates, region dummy flags (in_africa, in_me), and month‑based activation periods. This facilitates filtering and temporal alignment.
Included variables:
- VIEWS country ID (country_ID)
- VIEWS country name (name)
- Capital name (capname)
- Capital coordinates (caplong, caplat)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country Code (gwcode)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country Start Year (gwsyear)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country Start Month (gwsmonth)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country Start Day (gwsday)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country End Year (gweyear)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country End Month (gwemonth)
- Gleditsch-Ward Country End Day (gweday)
- ISO Country Name (isoname)
- ISO Numeric Country Code (isonum)
- ISO Alphabetic (3-letter) Country Code (isoab)
- VIEWS Month ID for GW Country Start Date (month_start)
- VIEWS Month ID for GW Country End Date (month_end)
- Centroid Coordinates (centroidlong, centroidlat)
- Dummy for Africa (in_africa)
- Dummy for Middle East (in_me)
CShapes v.0.6 Shapefiles
The CShapes shapefiles below (.zip) provide consistent country borders across time. These are provided for academic and non‑commercial use – see licensing info from original data provider.
Grid-Level Material
The PRIO-GRID units used in VIEWS are derived from from PRIO-GRID 2.0 (Tollefsen, Strand & Buhaug, 2012). It is a standardized spatial grid structure consisting of quadratic grid cells that jointly cover all terrestrial areas of the world at a resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 decimal degrees, approximately 55×55 km around the equator.
PRIO-GRID Identifiers
Table matching the PRIO-GRID IDs used by the VIEWS modeling system with their corresponding VIEWS country IDs through time (per month from January 1980 onwards), including variations in corresponding country classifications over time. Please note that grid cells may span multiple countries; in the VIEWS system, each grid cell is matched with the country that hosts the majority area of the given cell.
The table also contains region dummy flags (in_africa, in_me) that facilitate filtering.
Included variables:
- PRIO-GRID grid ID (priogrid_gid)
- VIEWS country ID (country_ID)
- VIEWS month ID (month_id)
- PRIO-GRID-month ID (pgm_id)
- Country-month ID (cm_id)
- Dummy for Africa (in_africa)
- Dummy for Middle East (in_me)
Shapefiles
Shapefiles from PRIO-GRID 2.0, as used by the VIEWS modeling system.
Temporal Units
The VIEWS month ID is a sequential counter (starting at 1 = January 1980), used to unify time indexing across datasets. The file below contains a table of the VIEWS month IDs matched with their corresponding calendar years and months.
Month ID Identifiers
Table matching the PRIO-GRID IDs used by the VIEWS modeling system with their corresponding VIEWS country IDs through time (per month from January 1980 onwards). Captures variation in corresponding country classifications over time. The table also contains regional dummy variables for Africa and the Middle East.
Included variables:
- Date MMM-YY (Date)
- Year (Year)
- Month (Month)
- VIEWS month ID (month_id)