Methodology: how War Radar estimates conflict risk

What War Radar shows

This is not a forecast. Every day an automated formula makes a very rough guess about each country’s risk of a new crisis — an outbreak of armed violence or a coup — within the next 90 days, based only on what is visible in open public information.

What the estimate is based on

The estimate combines: the level and trend of armed violence, the country’s recent history, official travel warnings by several governments, reported evacuations of diplomatic staff, the tone of the news and the situation in neighbouring countries. Each factor is weighted by how strongly it was linked to crises in the past. Some of these signals are detected automatically and can be wrong.

Data delay and what counts as war

Armed-violence data arrive with a delay of about two months, so a sharp escalation shows up in the level only later. “Major armed conflict” means at least 1,000 deaths in the past year and at least 25 in the past month; “Armed violence” means at least 25 deaths in the past month.

Early mark: sharp escalation in fighting

So as not to wait that long, the “Latest events” feed has a separate mark, “Possible sharp escalation in fighting”. It is set automatically: when reports of fighting in a country suddenly become much more frequent, an AI reads the article headlines and decides whether this looks like a new outbreak. The mark does not affect the risk level. Checked on 2022–2026: about half of these marks coincided with a sharp rise in deaths, but the mark missed most major escalations, including the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Four risk levels

Countries are grouped into four levels. For each level we show how often, historically, such weeks were followed by a new crisis. We deliberately do not show exact percentages: the uncertainty is large, and even at “Very high” most weeks were followed by nothing.

Happening now vs. risk

Ongoing events — major armed conflicts, coups, major disasters, epidemics, internet shutdowns — are shown separately as “Happening now”. A country already at war is not “at risk of a new crisis” — it is already in one, so its risk level can go down while the war goes on.

How the formula was checked

How it was checked: the formula was fitted on 2015–2022 and checked on 2023–2026, which it had not seen. The levels shown for past weeks on this site are recalculated by the current formula, which has seen those years, so the past looks better than it really was.

Known limits

Known limits. The formula misses many crises or sees them late: in 2022 Ukraine rose to “Elevated” only on 14 February and to “High” on 21 February, three days before the invasion. The formula saw those years during training, so this is a check in hindsight. Gaza and the West Bank have no separate assessment: violence data are recorded under Israel. Small territories without data are shown as “No data”.