ACLED — the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project — is the industry-standard dataset for geocoded political-violence and civil-unrest events. Every record carries lat/lon, date, event type (protest, riot, demonstration, armed clash, strategic development), actor codes, fatalities, and source. The State Department uses it. Every US fusion center references it. Most large NGOs build their security posture around it.
SignalGuard wires ACLED as a native Context-pillar signal via acleddata.com. Bring your API key and email; queries run server-side against the venue's geocoded radius.
What it tells you
- Is the political-violence temperature rising near my venue? Event counts and severity-tier shifts in the last 7, 30, and 90 days.
- Which actor types are driving it? ACLED's structured actor codes separate state-affiliated, civilian, identity-militia, and rebel-group actors so the operator sees the shape of unrest, not just the volume.
- What event types are most common in this radius? Demonstrations vs. riots vs. armed clashes vs. violence against civilians — each carries a different operational implication for ingress, egress, and stand-off posture.
- Is the trend escalating or de-escalating? Week-over-week and month-over-month deltas plotted against the venue location.
Pricing reality
ACLED's commercial licensing is tiered and honest about it:
| Tier | Who it's for | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Academic / non-commercial | Researchers, NGOs, journalists | Free |
| Commercial — domestic | Single-country security operators | ~$5K-10K/yr |
| Commercial — multi-region | Festival providers, parent-orgs, MSSPs | ~$10K-25K/yr |
SignalGuard supports both tiers via BYOK. The non-commercial key works exactly the same way the commercial key does — same endpoint, same query shape.
Best for
- International festival providers — events in Europe, LATAM, MENA, or APAC where civil unrest is a routine operational variable.
- UK COP consultancies — Code of Practice work where political-violence context is required documentation for major events.
- Parent-orgs (Live Nation, AEG, MSG, ASM) — portfolio-wide civil-unrest monitoring across global venue footprints.
- MSSPs running venue SOCs — adding structured civil-unrest signal to per-venue SLA dashboards.
How SignalGuard wires it
Native integration. SignalGuard pulls the ACLED REST API directly and exposes /api/acled?lat=&lon=&radius_km= for venue-scoped queries. Wire your account in two steps:
- Register at acleddata.com/register. ACLED issues an API key and ties it to your email.
- Drop both values into your SignalGuard workspace as
ACLED_API_KEYandACLED_EMAIL. Both are stored AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest and never logged.
From there, every scan within radius runs ACLED enrichment automatically. No per-scan setup, no manual download of the CSV bundle.
Run a scan
Run a scan with ACLED wired in → or review pricing tiers to see how ACLED enrichment fits into your plan.