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Combined satellite and news data capture unseen aspects of war

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Records of war extracted from news reports have shaped what researchers know about violence. Satellite images could transform that understanding — if access stays open.

By

  1. Hannes Mueller

    1. Hannes Mueller is at the Institute for Economic Analysis, Spanish National Research Council (IAE–CSIC), Barcelona 08193, Spain, and the Barcelona School of Economics, Barcelona.

Researchers’ understanding of political violence rests on an achievement of which few people are aware. For more than two decades, teams of coders have collected reports of wars around the world and turned them into structured records. In this sense, scientists’ understanding of political violence is news-based. Writing in Nature, Sticher et al.1 explain how satellite images could transform that understanding and drive a new era in conflict research.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02523-3

References

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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