woshidayezhu/poli3148-acled-sudan

My assignment for POLI3148 in HKU # From Capital Battle to Multi-Regional War: Spatial Diffusion and Civilian Targeting in Sudan, 2022–2025 ## Overview This POLI3148 data science project uses ACLED event data to examine Sudan's war before and after 15 April 2023. It asks how the outbreak of war changed the geography and civilian impact of political violence, with attention to Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, and the Central Nile Corridor. The project produces reproducible Python notebooks, generated summary tables, interactive Plotly figures, and a standalone interactive HTML analytical report. ## Research Question How did the April 2023 outbreak of war transform the geography and civilian impact of political violence in Sudan? ## Data Source - Primary dataset: ACLED Sudan event data. - Intended export range: 2022-01-01 to 2025-04-30. - Actual event date range in the raw file: 2022-01-02 to 2025-04-30. - All cleaned events: 19,648. - Political violence events: 13,580. - Post-war political violence events: 12,404. ACLED records reported political violence, demonstrations, and strategic developments. This project does not describe all ACLED events as violence; the main analysis focuses on the political violence subset. Reported fatalities are ACLED estimates and should not be interpreted as a verified death toll. Data source attribution: This project uses data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Users should follow ACLED's attribution requirements: acleddata.com ## Methodology The workflow begins with raw data auditing, data cleaning, and validation of expected ACLED columns. The cleaning notebook constructs period and conflict_phase variables using 2023-04-15 as an analytical breakpoint, not as a causal treatment. The main analytical subset includes events where disorder_type contains political violence. The project groups admin1 units into five analytical region groups: Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan, Central Nile Corridor, and Other Sudan. The …