The Global Data on Events Location and Tone (GDELT) project is attempting to document all the important political events in recorded history.
It currently contains data on over 250 million events, stretching back to 1979—and the intention is to extend that all the way to 1800.
Events are geotagged to city level and contain information on the type of confrontation, the parties involved and the action that occurred. The types of confrontation recorded are:
- material conflict
- material cooperation
- verbal conflict
- verbal cooperation
Events like bombings and riots are currently captured, drawing on traditional news sources, and the intention is to expand coverage to include, for example, financial events.
Founder Kalev Leetaru says
The goal of the project is to create a free and open global resource for the quantitative study and mapping of global conflict and cooperation and thus the data is being made available completely free and open for any use.
