Open source incident documentation process

The open-source incident collection process involves identifying relevant and credible international and local news providers, social media accounts and civil society organisations that report on conflict events by using information accessible online. These sources are then systematically checked by a research team at regular intervals to identify specific incidents that meet the data collection inclusion criteria. The manual process is supported by the use of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool specifically trained for this project to identify further relevant news articles from online sources. The AI training process has been supported pro bono by Dataminr, a leading AI corporation, as an “AI for Good” partner to enhance the algorithms used and expand the search terms beyond English to include French and Arabic. All sources – both those identified manually and through the use of AI – are manually cross-checked to identify duplicates.