Battle Location Dataset

While quantitative military analysis literature frequently models the relationship between geographical features -- particularly distance and terrain -- and the origins, conduct and outcome of war, few attempts have been made to correct several problematic conventions in how these features are studied. Such variables are typically measured as binary indicators of the dominant type of terrain in the conflict's host state, subjective ordinal variables, and linear distances between national borders or capital cities. Moreover, much of this literature has attempted to examine the effects of terrain at the macro level, where the unit of analysis might be an entire war, militarized interstate dispute, or a monadic or dyadic country-year. As a result, geography is often treated as time- and space-invariant within an individual case. This dataset represents an effort to address some of these problems. It is a geocoded version of the U.S. Army's CBD90 (HERO) battle-level dataset. It includes geographical coordinates for each battlefield, continuous measures of terrain (ruggedness/elevation/land cover) and deployment distance.

定量军事分析研究文献常对地理特征——尤以距离与地形为甚——与战争的起源、进程及结局之间的关联开展建模，但鲜有研究尝试纠正该领域研究中存在的若干不当范式。此类变量通常被编码为冲突所在国主导地形类型的二元指示变量、主观有序变量，以及国家边境或首都间的直线距离。此外，该领域多数研究聚焦于宏观层面的地形效应分析，其分析单元可为整场战争、军事化国家间争端，抑或单国或双边国家-年度观测单元。因此，在单个研究案例中，地理因素往往被视为不随时间与空间变化的恒定变量。本数据集旨在解决上述部分问题，其为美军CBD90（HERO）战役级数据集的地理编码版本。该数据集包含各战场的地理坐标，以及地形（崎岖度、海拔、土地覆盖）与部署距离的连续型测度指标。