ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project)

BLUF

ACLED is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that collects, codes, and disseminates real-time data on political violence and protest events worldwide. Founded in 2005 by Prof. Clionadh Raleigh, it has become the most widely used disaggregated conflict-event dataset in academia, humanitarian response, journalism, and intelligence analysis. Each ACLED record geolocates and dates a discrete event — battles, explosions/remote violence, violence against civilians, protests, riots, and strategic developments — with actor coding, fatality estimates, and a sourced notes field. Assessment: ACLED is a structured, queryable OSINT backbone that converts fragmentary open-source reporting into analysable time-series and geospatial data; its principal analytic limitations are source-availability bias (under-coverage of closed media environments) and fatality-estimate uncertainty, both of which the project documents.

Key Facts

• Type: Non-profit conflict-event data project / NGO
• Founded: 2005 (Clionadh Raleigh)
• HQ: Registered in the United States; distributed researcher and coder network
• URL: acleddata.com
• Coverage: Global (built out region by region; now near-worldwide)
• Output: Geocoded event database, curated analysis, regional dashboards, an API, and a Conflict Index

Analytic Role

• Structured OSINT source. ACLED is a primary input for open-source conflict monitoring, sitting alongside investigative outfits like Bellingcat but providing systematic time-series rather than single-case forensics.
• Feeds order-of-battle and warning work. Event clustering supports order-of-battle reconstruction and indicator tracking for Indications and Warning.
• Source-evaluation discipline applies. Because ACLED aggregates secondary reporting, the independent analyst must apply source-bias awareness — see field-manual chapter 04 — Source Evaluation Without Institutional Context.

Sources

ACLED methodology documentation and codebook (acleddata.com); Raleigh et al., “Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research (2010). Cross-referenced to the Independent Intelligence Analysis field manual.