Digital Governance
Resources
Who's Interested in Afghanistan's Lithium?
Blog
What connects mobile phones, the Taliban, India and China? A metal called lithium.
The Middle East: Blue Strike List
Briefs & Development
The Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace has observed that the increasing tendency to use water resources and infrastructure as targets or as weapons…
Water and Violence: Cyber Attacks and Cyber Warfare
Briefs & Development
The Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace called for protection of water resources and infrastructure from violent conflicts and terrorist acts. In this…
MapX: An Open Geospatial Platform to Manage, Analyze and Visualize Data on Natural Resources and the Environment
Briefs & Development
This paper describes MapX, a spatial data infrastructure that aims to support the sustainable use of natural resources and the environment by increasing access to…
Hazardous Legacies: An Open-Source Overview of the Destruction of Deir ez-Zor’s Oil Industry
Blog
Now that the so-called Islamic State (IS) is rapidly losing terrain in eastern Syria, a race is underway to capture the oil-rich Deir ez-Zor governorate.…
Backdraft #9: Joshua Busby on Mapping Hotspots of Climate and Security Vulnerability [Podcast]
Library
Maps help us to grasp complex ideas, such as patterns of risk and vulnerability, but the stories they tell can have significant implications. “It’s very…
Environmental Damage as a Weapon of War? Open Source Industrial Risk Analysis of the Mosul Battle
Blog
The start of the operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (IS) has seen unprecedented use of environmental pollution as a means to hinder…
Afghanistan: Mineral-Rich, Conflict Torn Electronics Treasure Trove
Blog
Besides oil, gas, and minerals such as as gold, copper and tantalum, a 2010, New York Times article cited an internal Pentagon memo stating that Afghanistan was…
Agriculture as a Funding Source of ISIS: A GIS and Remote Sensing Analysis
Briefs & Development
Agriculture is an important source of income for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), which currently rules over large parts of the breadbaskets…
Online Identification of Conflict Related Environmental Damage
Blog
In this blog, Wim Zwinenburg (PAX) and Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat) discuss the open source intelligence tools that they used to recover data on environmental damage…
Judging the Civilian and Environmental Risks of Cyber Warfare
Blog
How much of a threat do cyber attacks on industrial infrastructure pose to civilians and the environment? More to the point, how do we judge…
Online Identification of Conflict Related Environmental Damage
Briefs & Development
With the conflict in Syria soon to enter its fifth year, large parts of the country have been laid to waste by intense fighting, bombardment…
2015 Global Hunger Index: Armed Conflict and the Challenge of Hunger
Briefs & Development
The developing world has made progress in reducing hunger since 2000. The 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that the level of hunger in developing…
How Conflict Minerals Funded a War That Killed Millions, and Why Tech Giants are Finally Cleaning Up Their Act
Briefs & Development
The minerals from the DRC's mines have changed hands innumerable times on their journey to our PCs and phones. After being dug up in central…
Early Warning Early Action in East Africa: Mechanisms for Rapid Decision Making
Briefs & Development
The crisis in the Horn of Africa and the declaration of famine conditions in parts of Somalia in 2011 provided renewed impetus to break, once…