Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset

Abstract

This article presents a new, monthly updated dataset on organized violence—the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Candidate Events Dataset. It contains recent observations of candidate events, a majority of which are eventually included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Event Dataset as part of its annual update after a careful vetting process. We describe the definitions, sources and procedures employed to code the candidate events, and a set of issues that emerge when coding data on organized violence in near-real time. Together, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Candidate and Georeferenced Event Datasets minimize an inherent trade-off between update speed and quality control. Having monthly updated conflict data is advantageous for users needing near-real time monitoring of violent situations and aiming to anticipate future developments. To demonstrate this, we show that including them in a conflict forecasting system yields distinct improvements in terms of predictive performance: Average precision increases by 20–40% relative to using the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Event Dataset only. We also show that to ensure quality and consistency, revisiting the initial coding making use of sources that become available later is absolutely necessary.