Full Report
Extreme weather events are increasingly forcing millions of people from their homes. Last year, floods and storms caused more people to be internally displaced around the world than war or violence. Driving food insecurity and competition for resources, climate change can also indirectly intensify conflict risks. Analysing trends in both climate and conflict data is […] The post The Story of a Storm Part II: Visualising Conflict and Displacement Data appeared first on bellingcat.
Analysis Summary
# Main Topic
Visualizing the intersection of conflict, internal displacement (IDP), and climate-related hazards, specifically focusing on the case study of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, where extreme weather events exacerbate ongoing conflict-driven humanitarian crises.
## Key Points
- Extreme weather events (floods, storms) caused more global internal displacement last year than war or violence.
- Climate change indirectly intensifies conflict risks by driving food insecurity and resource competition.
- The analysis utilizes geospatial visualization tools (Google Earth Pro) combined with event data from ACLED and mapping data from OpenStreetMap (OSM).
- The Cabo Delgado case study highlights vulnerability, with recent satellite imagery showing rapid, undocumented expansion of settlements due to ongoing displacement (e.g., Ngalane).
- Mapping efforts are crucial as unmapped community areas are highly vulnerable to future meteorological hazards.
## Threat Actors
- **Islamist Militias / Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP):** The primary non-state actors whose localized attacks escalated into an ongoing regional civil war beginning in 2017.
- **Government Forces:** Involved in the ongoing civil war against the militias/ISCAP.
## TTPs
- **Violence/Conflict Progression Mapping:** Data analysis relies on categorizing conflict events into three periods reflecting changing displacement patterns:
- **Period 1 (Gradual Displacement):** Steady flow of IDPs around Metuge.
- **Period 2 (Peak Displacement):** Marked by a large-scale attack on Palma (March 2021), displacing over 100,000 people.
- **Period 3 (Post-Peak):** Periods of IDP return following military recapture of key towns.
- **Data Exploitation:** Reliance on geo-referenced event data (often approximate coordinates) from ACLED for spatial analysis.
- **Unmapped Settlement Growth:** A critical vulnerability where newly built homes in response to conflict displacement remain unmapped (invisible on existing data layers like standard OSM), increasing future disaster risk.
## Affected Systems
- **Geospatial Data Sources:**
- **ACLED Data:** Used for conflict event records (CSV format).
- **OpenStreetMap (OSM):** Used for base mapping data, revealing current data gaps.
- **Visualization Platform:** Google Earth Pro Desktop used for overlaying and analyzing time-series spatial data.
- **Affected Population:** Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, with close to a million displaced over the period analyzed. Specific community focus on Ngalane.
## Mitigations
- **Data Collection Improvement:** Utilizing ACLED data for monitoring political violence and unrest.
- **Geospatial Mapping Initiatives:** Direct intervention via HOT OSM Tasking Manager to map unmapped new buildings in vulnerable settlements like Ngalane.
- **Disaster Preparedness:** Updating essential mapping data to ensure preparedness for future cyclones or floods in highly vulnerable, rapidly growing communities.
- **Cross-Sector Analysis:** Integrating climate and conflict data analysis to better understand compounding humanitarian risks.
## Conclusion
The primary intelligence finding is that climate-driven displacement is being dramatically compounded by protracted conflict in regions like Cabo Delgado. Technical analysis requires integrating conflict incident reporting (ACLED) with geospatial verification (OSM/Google Earth Pro). The immediate area for mitigation centers on closing data gaps—specifically mapping the rapid, undocumented expansion of informal settlements that results from conflict displacement, as these areas are highly exposed to future climate hazards.