The latest version of the PRIO-GRID is now available at grid.prio.org, featuring several new dimensions and types of data, making it one of the best standardized platforms for visualization and analysis of conflict data.

Over the past few years, the PRIO-GRID has become an invaluable tool for peace and conflict researchers not just at PRIO, but all over the world. Articles using PRIO-GRID has been published in, inter alia, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Environmental Research Letters, Global Environmental Change, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Political Geography, PNAS, and World Development.

With the update of the PRIO-GRID to version 2.0, a new dedicated data portal at grid.prio.org provides direct access to the data, with quick visualizations of the data and custom builds of the dataset available for download.

Access the PRIO-GRID 2.0 portal here!

The purpose of the PRIO-GRID is to gather and standardize spatial data for easy use in statistical analysis. Spatial data is data you can put on a map – however, data from different sources are not always straightforward to combine with each other. Technical skills and time are required to match up different types of data. To make it easier for applied researchers to use spatial data in their analyses, PRIO-GRID provides a comprehensive selection of global data in a standardized grid system. Our focus is on data that is global in scope; however, if you have regional data that you want to fit into this system, you can apply our template to your data by adapting our open-source scripts for the purpose.

Our open-source scripts are available to download or fork at GitHub.com.

Some examples of the types of data you can find in PRIO-GRID are:

  • Excluded ethnic groups

A count of the number of politically excluded ethnic groups living within a given cell for any given year from 1946. This data is calculated from the excellent GeoEPR/EPR datasets from ETH Zürich who use country experts to code of the political status of ethnic groups in all countries of the world, and the main living areas of these groups.

  • SPEI3 at end of rainseason

Was it unusually hot and dry during the normal rain season in a cell? We have calculated which three consecutive months it rained the most on average since 1946 in each cell. Using that information, we can find drought measurements for those months, to see whether the rainy season that year was unusually dry or wet.

  • Population, total

How many people live in your cell (ca. 50km x 50km)? And how many lived in the same cell in 1950? Using data from the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), you now can get an estimate.

  • Drugs

Where did large-scale drug cultivation take place? The drugdata project, coded by Päivi Lujala, shows the main areas of the world where drug cultivation was ongoing over the last 60 years.

  • DMSP-OLS Nightlights

How much light is emitted into space from the cell you live in? The DMSP has had a program ongoing for more than twenty years, recording nightlight emissions from the earth to space. We aggregate their high-resolution yearly aggregates to the grid cell, giving an accessible overview of nightlight emissions around the world. Nightlights have been used by researchers to measure infrastructure, state reach and wealth, among other things.

  • Forest land

Where in the world is the surface mainly covered by forest? And are there changes in forest cover over the last 70 years? The Globcover and ISAM-HYDE projects can tell you. We provide cell aggregates of their data.