Kansas Event Data System (KEDS)

KEDS the uses automated coding of English-language news reports to generate political event data focusing on the Middle East, Balkans, and West Africa. These data are used in statistical early warning models to predict political change. The ten-year project is based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas; it has been funded primarily by the U.S. National Science Foundation including grants SES-9410023, SES-0096086, SES-0455158 and SES-0527564. Additional support has been provided by the University of Kansas General Research Allocation Fund.
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The Kansas Event Data Project is a ten-year project focused on the development and application of political event data; it is funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of Kansas. The project has three major research concentrations:<br /><br />

<b>Software development for the machine-coding of political event data</b> <br />

The initial focus of the KEDS project was the development of techniques for converting English-language reports of political events
into event data. This replaced labor-intensive and error-prone process of human coding with inexpensive, transparent and reproducible automated coding. The centerpiece of this effort is the KEDS computer program, a Macintosh program with a user-friendly interface and a variety of output options. In support of KEDS, we have also produce several programs for filtering texts and aggregating the resulting event data so that it can be used in statistical analysis.
The KEDS program has now been used in about half-a-dozen NSF-funded event data projects, as well as a number of dissertations and other smaller projects.<br /><br />

<b>Production of event data sets</b> <br />

Using the KEDS program, news reports from the Reuters wire service, and the World Events Interaction Survey (WEIS) event coding scheme, we have produced several event data sets that can be downloaded for use in political studies. Our primary focus has been on the Levant -- Egypt, I
srael, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinians and SyriaÑand until recently we maintained a near-real time data set on this region. Other data sets available at this site include a Levant data set coded with the BCOW coding scheme, a 1979-1997 data set covering the Gulf region, a 1987-1997 set covering Algeria, and pointers to several other data sets covering an assortment of contemporary crisis areas. KEDS coding dictionaries are available for most of these data set
s.<br /><br />

<b>Development of early warning methods</b><br />

For the past four years, most of our research has focused on the development of early warning techniques for political change, primarily using the Levant as a case study. We have experimented with a number of different methods, including factor analysis, discriminant analysis, an assortment of clustering algorithms, and most recently hidden Markov models.<br /><br />

This research was supported in part by a subcontract to
National Science Foundation grant SES90-25130 (Data Development in International Relations), by NSF grant SBR 9410023 and by the University of Kansas General Research Allocation Fund 3500-X0-0038.

KEDS项目（堪萨斯事件数据项目，Kansas Event Data Project）通过对英文新闻报道实施自动化编码，生成聚焦中东、巴尔干地区与西非的政治事件数据。此类数据被应用于统计预警模型，以预测政治变革。该为期十年的研究项目依托堪萨斯大学政治学系开展，主要资助方为美国国家科学基金会（U.S. National Science Foundation），资助编号包括SES-9410023、SES-0096086、SES-0455158与SES-0527564。此外，堪萨斯大学通用研究拨款基金亦提供了额外支持。

堪萨斯事件数据项目是一项为期十年的研究计划，致力于政治事件数据的开发与应用，资助方为美国国家科学基金会与堪萨斯大学。该项目包含三大核心研究方向：

<b>政治事件数据机器编码软件开发</b>

KEDS项目的初始研究重点为开发将政治事件英文报道转化为标准化事件数据的技术方法。该方案以低成本、可溯源且可复现的自动化编码流程，替代了传统耗时耗力且易引入误差的人工编码工作。此项工作的核心成果为KEDS计算机程序——一款搭载友好用户交互界面、支持多种输出格式的Macintosh程序。为配合KEDS程序的落地应用，团队还开发了多款用于文本筛选与事件数据聚合的配套工具，以满足统计分析的需求。目前，KEDS程序已被应用于约6项由美国国家科学基金会资助的事件数据项目，以及多篇学位论文与其他小型研究课题中。

<b>事件数据集制作</b>

依托KEDS程序、路透社新闻专线的新闻报道，以及世界事件互动调查（World Events Interaction Survey, WEIS）编码方案，团队已制作多款可下载供政治研究使用的标准化事件数据集。我们的核心研究区域为黎凡特地区——涵盖埃及、以色列、约旦、黎巴嫩、巴勒斯坦与叙利亚——直至近期，我们仍维持着该区域的准实时事件数据集。本站点可获取的其他数据集包括：采用BCOW编码方案的黎凡特数据集、1979-1997年覆盖海湾地区的数据集、1987-1997年覆盖阿尔及利亚的数据集，以及指向多个涵盖当代各类危机区域的数据集的链接。针对多数此类数据集，均可获取配套的KEDS编码词典。

<b>政治变革预警方法开发</b>

在过去四年中，团队的多数研究聚焦于政治变革预警技术的开发，主要以黎凡特地区为案例研究对象。团队已测试了多种不同的分析方法，包括因子分析、判别分析、各类聚类算法，以及近期应用的隐马尔可夫模型（hidden Markov models）。

本研究部分依托美国国家科学基金会SES90-25130号资助项目（国际关系领域数据开发）的分包合同、美国国家科学基金会SBR 9410023号资助项目，以及堪萨斯大学通用研究拨款基金3500-X0-0038号开展。

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

KEDS数据集通过自动化编码英文新闻报告生成中东、巴尔干和西非地区的政治事件数据，用于统计早期预警模型预测政治变革。该项目由美国国家科学基金会和堪萨斯大学资助，涵盖软件开发、数据集生成和早期预警方法研究三个主要方向。