Loading GSCI Data
⚠ total_sources < 10,000 — GSCI value may be unreliable due to GDELT ingestion gaps, holiday effect, or crawler outages.
GDELT · CAMEO · Daily · Open Source

Global Severity-weighted
Conflict Index (GSCI)

An event-based daily measure of global conflict intensity constructed from GDELT CAMEO-coded events, weighted by Goldstein severity scores and source-share normalized.

Data updated weekly · Events curated by Claude AI
Please independently verify details via source links
Latest Value
30-Day Change
vs. 30 days prior
Sample Mean
Mar 2015 – present
1-Year Peak
trailing 12 months
Observations
Daily records
GSCI · Daily Index Value
Data Quality Notice — Source Count Variability
The GSCI denominator Nt (total daily news sources) can vary substantially, potentially distorting index values on low-coverage dates. Days where total_sources < 10,000 are highlighted in amber on the chart when the Low Src toggle is enabled.
Known causes of abnormally low total_sources values:
  • Holiday Effect — news production declines on public holidays globally, reducing GDELT ingestion volume.
  • GDELT Crawler Outages — GDELT's documentation notes occasional 12–24 hour data gaps due to Google Cloud sync delays or external crawl rate-limit events.
  • Major News Crowding — a dominant breaking story can crowd out other coverage, compressing source distribution.
  • Deduplication & Versioning Changes — GDELT's internal deduplication logic or versioning updates can cause step-changes in reported source counts.
GSCI values on flagged dates should be interpreted with caution. For robust analysis, consider excluding days where total_sources falls below an appropriate threshold for your use case.

Index Construction

GSCI aggregates CAMEO-coded conflict events from GDELT, retaining only events with strictly negative Goldstein scores. Each event is weighted by its absolute severity and normalized by total daily news sources.

GSCIt = Σi∈Ct |Gi| × Si,t / Nt

Ct = conflict events on day t (Goldstein < 0)
|Gi| = absolute Goldstein severity weight
Si,t = sources reporting event i on day t
Nt = total daily news sources

Data & Updates

  • Data source: GDELT Event Stream (100+ languages)
  • Event taxonomy: CAMEO conflict codes (Goldstein < 0)
  • Update schedule: Every Monday via GitHub Actions / BigQuery
  • Coverage: March 2015 – present
  • Complement: GPR Index, Caldara & Iacoviello (2022)
  • Data quality: Days with total_sources < 10,000 are flagged; may reflect holidays, GDELT outages, or crawl rate limits.
Armed Conflict
Terrorism
Political Crisis
Domestic