As of October 2025, VIEWS has implemented an important update to how summary events in the UCDP GED and UCDP Candidate datasets are processed in our forecasting pipeline. This change improves how temporal uncertainty in conflict data is handled by our models.

Summary events are records that span multiple months, used by UCDP when the precise timing of conflict fatalities cannot be determined. Previously, VIEWS assigned all fatalities from such events to the final month of the period. While this approach allowed us to generate monthly inputs required by the forecasting model, it could introduce problematic distortions – such as sudden spikes in violence and a misleading sense of calm in the months leading up to conflict onsets. This issue has now been addressed in our system.

What’s Changed:

Beginning with the October 2025 forecast release, fatalities in summary events are now distributed evenly across all months covered by each event. This change reduces artificial volatility in the data used to train and run our models and offers a more realistic representation of conflict trends.

Updates to Our Data Pipeline and API

• Our internal predictor datasets – which include indicators derived from the UCDP GED and UCDP Candidate datasets – have been updated to reflect this improved handling of summary events. These datasets are specifically adapted for use in VIEWS’ forecasting models.
• The predictor dataset available via the VIEWS API, which provides a selection of key indicators from our internal database, has been updated accordingly.
• As part of our monthly update cycle, we now overwrite the past 12 months of UCDP-derived data in our system. This captures both the improved treatment of summary events and any other updates or corrections in UCDP records. This practice has been in place since July 2025, but now also incorporates the new handling of summary events.

Forecasting Implications

The VIEWS model has been retrained using the updated dataset, and forecasts released October 2025 onward incorporate the revised handling of summary events.

Users may observe apparent shifts in forecasted risk compared to previous data releases. These changes should be interpreted with caution, as they may reflect updates in data processing rather than changes in conflict dynamics on the ground.

Forecasts issued prior to October 2025 were generated using the earlier data-handling method.

A Note on our Predictor Datasets

The version of UCDP data (and other datasets) released via the VIEWS API reflects our internal adaptations for forecasting purposes. These processed datasets may differ from the original dataets due to formatting, aggregation, or methodological adjustments.

For most research purposes, we recommend accessing input data directly from the data providers’ access points. The VIEWS-adapted versions are intended for specific use cases, including:

• Evaluation of the performance of VIEWS models against the data they were trained on
• Participation in VIEWS’ prediction challenges

We provide our version of key indicators to support these use cases and ensure transparency, but they are not intended to replace the original datasets. For access to the most accurate and up-to-date versions of original data, we always recommend using official access points provided by the concerned data providers.

For any questions about these changes, please contact info@viewsforecasting.org.