Wednesday 7 November 2012

Wikileaks Iraq: data journalism maps every death

Wikileaks Iraq: data journalism maps every death

Data journalism allows us to really interrogate the Wikileaks Iraq war logs release. Here is the statistical breakdown - and data for you to download
• Get the data
• Get the fullscreen map
Wikileaks Iraq: a man holds his wounded daughter outside in August 2006 after being injured in road side bomb explosion. Photograph: Ali Abbas/EPA
UPDATE: an academic who has worked with the data has pointed out some of its limitations - you can read his take here
Data journalism works best when there's a lot of data to work with.Wikileaks' Iraq war logs release has dumped some 391,000 records of the Iraq war into the public arena. We've had them for a few weeks - what have we found out?
This is in a different league to the Wikileaks Afghanistan leak - there's a good case for saying the new release has made the war the most documented in history. Every minor detail is now there for us to analyse and breakdown but one factor stands out: the sheer volume of deaths, most of which are civilians.
Some key findings:

Total deaths

• The database records 109,032 deaths in total for the period
• The database records the following death counts: 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents and 15,196 Iraqi security forces
• The worst place for deaths was Baghdad - 45,497, followed by MND north (which is the region that goes from Baghdad up to Kurdistan) where another 34,210 died. The quietest place was the north east with only 328 deaths

Murders and escalation of force

• 34,814 people were recorded as murdered in 24,840 incidents
• The worst month was December 2006 with 2,566 murders - and 2006 was the worst year with 16,870 murders
• The database records 12,578 escalation of force incidents (where someone is shot driving too fast at a checkpoint, for instance) - and these resulted in 778 recorded deaths

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

• There were 65,439 IED explosions over the period - with 31,780 deaths recorded on the database from those alone.
• There were another 44,620 IEDs found and cleared
• The worst month for IED explosions was May 2007 with 2,080 IED explosions
The Guardian has decided not to republish the entire database, largely because we can't be sure the summary field doesn't contain confidential details of informants and so on. But, so you have some data to work with, we have provided this spreadsheet. It contains the records of every incident where someone dies, nearly 60,000 in all. We have removed the summary field so it's just the basic data: the military heading, numbers of deaths and the geographic breakdown.
Google Fusion tables is fantastic for mapping out bulky datasets and they don't come much bulkier than this. We took all these incidents where someone had died and put it on the map above. The fullscreen version is easier to use. A few of the datapoints aren't mapping correctly - but this may be a problem with the data.
You can download it below, plus we've broken down the deaths by cause and year in sortable tables. What can you do with it?

Data summary

Deaths and wounded

Click heading to sort
YEAR
Coalition forces
Iraqi forces
Civilians
Enemy
TOTAL DEATHS
TOTAL WOUNDED, all categories
20047471,0312,7815,99510,55418,567
20058562,2565,7463,59412,45224,850
20068214,37025,1784,65735,02641,164
20079194,71823,3336,79335,76355,804
20082821,9486,3622,63511,22723,632
20091468732,6813104,01012,365
TOTAL3,77115,19666,08123,984109,032176,382

Causes of death

Click heading to sort
Category
Coalition forces
Iraqi forces
Civilians
Insurgents
Accident42825659922
Ambush49385154
Arrest0122056
Arson061146
ARTY00241
Assassination01832467
Attack861,1671,6273,775
Attack Threat0011
Blue-Blue9234
Blue-Green05140
Blue-White00621
Border Ops0002
Breaching0010
Cache Found/Cleared21028236
Carjacking05275
Close Air Support005776
Confiscation00357
Cordon/Search24347316
Counter Mortar Fire00024
Deliberate Attack030119
Demonstration1164762
Detain021987
Direct Fire4824,2704,7666,807
Direct Fire Threat0010
Elicitation0100
Equipment Failure4230
Escalation of Force02268670
Explosive Remnants of War (ERW)/Turn In0010
Green-Blue51430
Green-Green058172
Green-White02480
IED Explosion2,1075,99020,2283,455
IED False0030
IED Found/Cleared63190579
IED Hoax1021
IED Pre-detonation00350
IED Suspected00037
IED Threat0002
Indirect Fire1922842,0871,040
Indirect Fire Threat0002
Intimidation Threat06181
Kidnapping06716118
Kidnapping Threat0020
Looting00183
Medevac3152
Mine Found/Cleared0021
Mine Strike3724306
Movement to Contact10077
Murder92,16932,56373
Murder Threat0010
Other19472584437
Other Defensive25141116
Other offensive0418639
Patrol034361
Police Actions011432
Raid127586619
Recon00013
Sabotage0260
SAFIRE67422317
SAFIRE Threat0010
Search and Attack00090
Shooting0180
Small Unit Actions2713653,129
Smuggling0152
Sniper Ops8617362364
Staff Estimate023800
Surveillance01861
TCP00525
Theft085714
Tribal Feud0141385
UAV00349
Unexploded Ordnance02153
Unknown Explosion42428461
Vehicle Interdiction00429
White-Blue0050
White-Green0001
White-White00200
Not known0100
TOTAL3,77115,19666,08123,984

Download the data

World government data

Development and aid data

Can you do something with this data?

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1 comment:


  1. Alliance aggression on Iraq lies in losses in lives?
    Comments: Khalid Jafri

    Undoubtedly coalition losses far greater than announced by the coalition, so that the Iraqi army was on the defensive and coalition armies in the attack position . When the Iraqi army turned into resistance and supported by the Iraqi people, the losses will be reduced because the policy of resistance (strike and fled).
    Guardian here in English and here a summary in Arabic published research relies on published sources on WikiLeaks and what was published by the press.http://bladalarb.blogspot.com/2012/11/alliance-aggression-on-iraq-lies-in.html

    ReplyDelete