Every map is a projection of addressed observations, not an assertion that proximity, color, or correlation establishes cause.
Processing sequence
- Preserve the source row and its versioned dataset boundary.
- Normalize names or codes only to join a row to reference geometry; retain the source identity in raw records.
- Join conflict-year, candidate-event, regime, mortality, fertility, and crude-birth-rate records by disclosed country and time keys.
- Render each measurement in its native unit. Visual height or color is a comparison aid, never a replacement value.
- Keep missing values missing. No pre-source history, current-year health value, motive, or responsibility is synthesized.
Prompted causal exploration
Users can move from an outer conflict record toward participants, locations, decisions, observed departures, and consequences. Plausible projections remain questions or explicitly labelled projections until a source-bearing enclosure is available. Nesting preserves disagreement and provenance instead of collapsing competing records into one premature flag.
Network-science layer
The conflict network applies the analytical vocabulary developed in Albert-László Barabási's Network Science to the visible UCDP-derived graph. It computes unique-neighbor degree, normalized degree centrality, normalized betweenness, connected components, density, and degree distribution for each selected conflict and date window. Node size responds sublinearly to degree.
Hub denotes the current graph's top degree decile; bottleneck denotes the top decile of positive betweenness. These are relative structural descriptions. They do not show that a conflict graph is scale-free, arose by preferential attachment, or that a node holds command or causal power. For fields above 1,200 nodes, betweenness is computed on structural nodes while observation leaves remain visible.
Geometry
Natural Earth geometry supplies geographic reference only. Boundary display does not express a position on sovereignty, recognition, or territorial claims. Country aliases are used solely to align source naming systems with map features.