README.Rmd

---
title: "ACLED Conflict Indicators"
author: "Darius A. Görgen"
date: "2024-10-16"
output: github_document
---

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# Introduction

This repository contains the codes used to calculate local indicators of 
conflict exposure. Conflict event data are taken from [ACLED](https://acleddata.com/)
and indicators are calculated based on administrative units of level 2.
Popluation data is based on [WorldPop](https://www.worldpop.org/).
Project informations represents data internal to KfW. Since most of the used 
data cannot be shared publicly, this repository only containes the code in order
to reproduce the results. The conflict indicators, however, can be calculated
using [`{mapme.biodiversity}`](https://mapme-initiative.github.io/mapme.biodiversity/reference/acled.html) 
and a valid ACLED account with API access.

As indicators of local conflict exposure we calculate:

- total number of aggregated fatalities per unit and year
- number of fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per unit and year
- total number of population exposed to certain types of events per unit and year
- number of people exposed to these events per 100,000 inhabitants per unit and year

based on the following configuration file which is used as input to 
[`{mapme.pipelines}`](https://github.com/mapme-initiative/mapme.pipelines)

```yaml
`r xfun::file_string("config.yaml")`
```


To fetch ACLED data successfully, the code expects to find a file called `.env`
in the top-level with the following valid content to be set:

```
ACLED_ACCESS_EMAIL=<your-email>
ACLED_ACCESS_KEY=<your-key>
```