Introducing the Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator of political violence

Abstract: Modern armed conflicts have a tendency to cluster together and spread geographically. However, the geography of most conflicts remains under-studied. To fill this gap, this article presents a new indicator that measures two key geographical properties of subnational political violence: the conflict intensity within a region on the one hand, and the spatial distribution of conflict within a region on the other. We demonstrate the indicator in North and West Africa between 1997 to 2019 to show that it can clarify how conflicts can spread from place to place and how the geography of conflict changes over time.