ViewConflicts: Software for Visualising Spatiotemporal Data on Armed Conflicts

ViewConflicts is a software system designed to support visual exploration of a dataset on armed conflicts. This is a spatiotemporal dataset since each conflict is represented with a coordinate, a radius for its extension as well as �begin� and �end� year for when the conflict was active. Two basic exploration methods are available in ViewConflicts: multiple linked windows (brushing) and animation. Ongoing work tries to incorporate visualisation of other datasets recognised as affecting the risk, duration, type and location of armed conflicts. Datasets on armed conflicts as well as datasets on conflict generating factors have both a temporal and spatial dimension, consequently, it is important that the visualisation tool takes into account both time and space components.