A groundbreaking new tool, launched today by the Water, Peace and Security (WPS) partnership, can predict the risk of violent conflicts up to 12 months ahead of time. The WPS Global Early Warning Tool uses machine learning coupled with environmental, meteorological, social and economic data to forecast exactly where organized violence is likely to occur. This tool will enable global development, diplomacy, disaster response and defense experts – together with country governments and local stakeholders – to intervene and help defuse conflicts before blood is shed.

The WPS Global Early Warning Tool predicts the risk of conflict over the coming 12 months across Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia (and soon globally) by analyzing patterns between violent conflict and more than 80 environmental, economic and social variables going back 20 years, and then compares those patterns to current conditions to pinpoint potential hotspots. The tool has highly granular spatial resolution – at the sub-provincial or district/county level. Early trials suggest an 86% success rate in identifying conflict situations where instances of organized violence lead to more than 10 fatalities. The tool is unique in separating emerging conflicts from ongoing conflicts. Our initial finding show that the tool’s water risk indicators are significant in predicting emerging conflict

Water is certainly not the only driver of conflict, but it is an important – and often overlooked – one. A quarter of the world's population lives in extremely water stressed areas. While action on water issues can serve as a means of building peace, water risks like drought, scarcity, pollution and floods can also serve as threat multipliers that help trigger conflict or contribute to famine, loss of livelihoods or displacement. Previous early warning tools have only focused on vulnerabilities such as political, economic, social and demographic factors to predict conflict. The WPS Global Early Warning Tool is unique because it combines these factors with environmental variables linked to water, such as rainfall, water scarcity and crop failures, to understand the full picture. We used a number of traditional indicators of predicting conflicts, such as economic strength, political, stability, demographic trends and past conflict, which is actually a predictor of future conflict," said Charles Iceland, director of global and national water initiatives at the World Resources Institute. The organization partnered with IHE Delft, Deltares, The Hague Center for Strategic Studies, International Alert and Wetlands International to develop the tool.
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