Peace Deals Revisited Presentation

PEACEDEALSREVISITED

The Peace Informatics Lab is a project of the Centre for Innovation, Campus The Hague (Leiden University)In cooperation with: Leiden Institute for Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) Pax Ludens Foundation Grotius Centre The Hague Centre for Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (CTC)

VisionStatus Quo

Peace studies today are driven by qualitative or quantitative research. Central to research designs: testing hypotheses about what works in a certain contextSpecific fields of expertise provide the main perspectives (conflict studies, economics, etc.)With the emergence of big data: we can rethink some of these routines.

We want to use big data to generate new hypotheses without a clear-cut disciplinary starting point

WHY BIG DATA

STARTING POINTS

Data analytics is not yet applied for peace studies

Data availability will increase in the coming decade

Proof of concept required for identifying way forward

WHAT IS BIG DATA

APPROACH

Data mining(Yes!)

Statistics(No)

8%

subgroupDISCOVERY

We ‘interview a database’:

algorithms help in finding patterns that are otherwise hard to find.

However:

They do not find causalities.

The patterns have to be interpreted by domain experts.

(from theory and policy practice)

METHODOLOGY

+2y

Looking for correlations

the country context before a peace

agreement was signed

the change in country context after a peace agreement was signed

-2y

ECONOMIC

SOCIAL

POLITICAL

SOCIO- CULTURAL

TECHNOLOGY

LEGAL

ACADEMIC

DEMOGRAPHY

ENVIRONMENTAL

METHODOLOGY

MEDIA

REGULATORY

MILITARY

ECONOMIC

SOCIAL

POLITICAL

SOCIO-CULTURAL

TECHNOLOGY

LEGAL

ACADEMIC

DEMOGRAPHY

ENVIRONMENTAL

REGULATORYMILITARY

+2y-2y

DATA & SOURCES

Current DatabaseData Sources

Open, public access

Global coverage

Long-term coverage

Diverse in focus

1000+ UN SC Resolutions

50+ affected countries

900 variables

8484%% 4343%% 22%%

DATAavailability today (Africa)

peace agreements overTIME

HEAT MAPThe database fusion platform offers insights into the overall correlations.

It points to areas of interest (dark-shaded)

SUBGROUP DISCOVERY

Using CORTANA* the Peace Informatics Lab team build the proof of concept for using big data for peace studies.

* CORTANA is a data mining software from the Leiden Institute for Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)

“We can show if a certain group of peace deals shows a societal change that is significantly

different from the average correlation”

[the following slides are illustrations based on the data thus far collected – to be expanded]

someSUBGROUPS

If textiles and clothing (% of value added manufacturing) is higher than 1.39% at the time of the resolution, then voice and accountability shows a

2.2% increase after 2 years (average is 1.36% decrease)This applies to 143 resolutions, 11 countries

-2 +2y

someSUBGROUPS

If governance effectiveness is lower than -1.6 at the time of the resolution, then the number of fixed telephone lines shows a 17.4%

increase per year after 2 years (average is 2.9% increase)This applies to 119 resolutions, 8 countries

-2 +2y

someSUBGROUPS

If total health expenditure (% of GDP) is lower than 4.7% at the time of the resolution, then voice and accountability shows a 0.2% increase after

2 years (average is 1.36% decrease)This applies to 735 resolutions, 44 countries

-2 +2y

someSUBGROUPS

If average temperature in June is above 31.7 °C at the time of the resolution, then expenditure-side real GDP at chained PPP shows a

10.7% increase after 2 years (average is 3.9% increase)This applies to 123 resolutions, 3 countries

Iraq, Kuwait, Chad

-2 +2y

USEFUL?

These examples give a first impression of the type of correlations that could be uncovered. Meaningful analysis will have to be based on

much larger amounts of data, such as cell phone, twitter, etc.

In 2014/2015 the Peace Informatics Lab will work with a growing group of international partners to bring a sufficiently large dataset online and to

make it available for public use.

The way forwardTOWARDS BIG DATA

Expand the national data

Expand beyond national data

add local peace deals (provincial coverage)

add local data on variables (based on data from NGOs, etc)

add monthly data

create your own data (crowdsourcing)

...

add peace deals

add academic & media coverage

add UN peacekeeping presence

add twitter, cell phone data

add climate data

...

CONTACT

[email protected]

peace informatics

Peace Deals Revisited Presentation

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