ConflictLens is an independent publication examining the structure of recorded conflict violence through open data.
The project combines data analysis, explanatory writing and reproducible research. Its purpose is to identify and present meaningful patterns in the recorded distribution of violence while documenting the measurement choices and limitations that shape those patterns.
From analysis to public explanation
The articles are the main public expression of ConflictLens.
Each article starts with a specific analytical question and develops it through a small number of carefully selected results and visualizations. The aim is to make complex patterns understandable to a non-technical audience without stripping away the uncertainty, context or methodological caution they require.
Rather than publishing broad summaries of conflict around the world, ConflictLens focuses on narrower questions:
- How concentrated are recorded conflict deaths across years and places?
- How much do a small number of extreme episodes shape global trends?
- What disappears when individual events are aggregated into annual totals?
- How do different conflict-data sources produce different views of violence?
- What broader political and socioeconomic contexts are associated with the observed patterns?
The articles present what the analysis reveals, explain how the results should be read, and identify what the data cannot establish.
Analytical scope
ConflictLens currently works at two complementary levels.
The first is the analysis-unit-year level. It is used to study concentration, intensity, diffusion, temporal change, macro-contextual gradients and signals of civilian exposure.
The second is the event level. It provides the finer geographical, temporal and actor-related detail that annual aggregates cannot preserve.
Neither level is sufficient on its own. Aggregates reveal structure; events help recover composition and context. The articles draw on both perspectives according to the question being examined.
Source hierarchy
UCDP is the primary source for the project’s headline organized-violence death estimates. ACLED is used as a complementary benchmark rather than a drop-in substitute. V-Dem and World Development Indicators provide political, institutional, demographic and socioeconomic context.
Each source follows its own definitions, coverage rules and revision process. Disagreement between sources is therefore treated as information about measurement, not automatically as an error to be eliminated.
The published results should always be understood as patterns recorded by particular datasets over particular periods—not as a complete account of all conflict violence.
Interpretation principles
ConflictLens follows several public guardrails:
- A country-year contributor is not a perpetrator.
- A share of recorded deaths is not a moral or legal verdict.
- Missing data and observed zeroes are not interchangeable.
- Raw counts and population-normalized rates answer different questions.
- Aggregate curves must be decomposed before they are interpreted.
- Descriptive associations are not treated as causal effects.
- Recorded conflict data is not a substitute for historical or political analysis.
The project does not forecast future violence, attribute legal responsibility or create rankings of suffering.
Its purpose is to show what the data allows us to observe—and where a responsible interpretation must stop.
Open analysis and reproducibility
The articles are supported by a public analytical workflow.
Core notebooks contain the broader source exploration, data preparation and descriptive analysis from which article topics emerge. Dedicated reproduction notebooks then recalculate the figures and annotations used in each article, export the published visualizations and validate the principal numerical claims.
The notebooks are not intended to replace the articles. They make the analytical process behind them inspectable.
This separation allows each part of the project to serve a different reader:
- the articles communicate the results and their significance;
- the reproduction notebooks show how the published claims were obtained;
- the methodological documentation explains the shared conventions and limitations;
- the core notebooks preserve the wider analytical work from which future articles can be developed.
Raw third-party datasets are not redistributed. Reproduction therefore requires downloading the corresponding source versions from their original providers.
The complete workflow is available in the public repository. See the methodology, data-source documentation and interpretation guardrails.
About the project
ConflictLens is an independent and evolving project created by Ludovic Lafon.
The current work focuses on turning a validated analytical foundation into a series of public articles, while progressively extending the analysis from annual aggregates towards event-level detail.
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