Location, Location, Location…Identifying Hot spots of International Conflict

This article introduces new variables summarizing the geographic location of Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) and “hot spots” of these locations for the years 1816 to 2001. Three exercises are detailed: (1) the specification and collection of geographic location data for each MID onset; (2) the generation of static map representations of these data; and (3) the application of spatial cluster analysis techniques to examine their geographic distribution. Initially, I address the protocol followed while carrying out the first two of these steps - offering thoughts on the coding procedures and examples of the mapped representations of the data. I then detail the techniques used to conduct spatial cluster analysis. The results of these analyses confirm the apparent evidence of the mapped presentations of the data, offering evidence in support of the a priori expectation that dispute onsets are clustered in space and time; revealing apparent “hot spots” of conflict across most regions of the world. I conclude with a discussion of potential applications of this new MID location dataset.

本文介绍了用于概括1816年至2001年间国家间军事争端（Militarized Interstate Disputes, MIDs）及其地理区位“热点”的新型变量。本文详述了三项研究步骤：（1）为每一起国家间军事争端的爆发事件明确并采集其地理区位数据；（2）生成上述数据的静态地图可视化结果；（3）运用空间聚类分析技术探究其地理分布特征。首先，本文阐述执行前两项步骤时遵循的操作规范，就数据编码流程及数据的地图可视化示例展开说明；随后详细介绍空间聚类分析的具体实施技术。上述分析结果印证了数据地图可视化呈现出的直观特征，为争端爆发事件在时空维度上具有集聚性的先验预期提供了实证支撑；同时揭示了全球多数区域均存在明显的冲突热点。最后，本文对这款新型国家间军事争端地理区位数据集的潜在应用场景展开讨论。