ViEWS2018 was the first operational conflict prediction model employed by the VIEWS system. This pilot model was in use between 2018-2020, generating monthly predictions for future armed conflict in Africa up to three years in advance.
This is a legacy model. The model codebase remains accessible via an open-source GitHub repository for transparency, but is no longer supported or maintained.
Predicted outcome #1
Number of fatalities
Point predictions for the number of fatalities per country-month and PRIO-GRID month.
Predicted type(s) of violence
State-based conflict (SB), non-state conflict (NS), and one-sided violence (OS)
Per UCDP definitions: inter- or intrastate armed conflicts over government or territory, in which at least one (SB) or neither (NS) of the warring parties are directly affiliated with a government of a state; and violence by an armed group against unarmed civilians (OS)
Country-level coverage
Africa
The country level of analysis is based on the Gleditsch & Ward (1999) list of independent states, combined with the GIS dataset CShapes that specifies the geographic coverage of the included countries.
Sub-national coverage
Africa (0.5°)
The sub-national level of analysis is derived from PRIO-GRID 2.0, a spatial grid structure of quadratic cells that jointly cover all areas of the world at a resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 decimal degrees, approximately 55×55 km around the equator.
Lead time
1-36 months
The model generated predictions for each month in a rolling 3-year window.
Update schedule
Monthly
The model generated new predictions each month, based on the most recently available input data.
Codebase
Open code
Source code and additional documentation of this model are available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 license.
Model documentation
ViEWS: A political violence early-warning system
Håvard Hegre, Marie Allansson, Matthias Basedau, Michael Colaresi, Mihai Croicu, Hanne Fjelde, Frederick Hoyles, Lisa Hultman, Stina Högbladh, Remco Jansen, Naima Mouhleb, Sayyed Auwn Muhammad, Desirée Nilsson, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Gudlaug Olafsdottir, Kristina Petrova, David Randahl, Espen Geelmuyden Rød, Gerald Schneider, Nina von Uexkull, and Jonas Vestby (2019). Journal of Peace Research 52(2), 155-174.