About World Tension Map

World Tension Map gives every country a tension score from 0 to 100, built from reported conflict deaths and from figures on climate, food, jobs, prices and refugees. The score is our own index. It is not a forecast and it is not a probability of war. Its weights are judgement calls, not calibrated results.

The conflict base

Conflict sets the base of the score. For a country, it comes from deaths reported in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's Candidate data set, on a logarithmic scale that reaches 100 at 100,000 deaths. Each death counts less as time passes, losing half its weight every 90 days, unless that conflict has had deaths in the last 30 days. A government fighting outside its borders carries half of those deaths.

The world score has its own conflict base, with five measures: conflict deaths (30 % of the base), wars between states (25 %), countries with active fighting (15 %), state wars involving a nuclear power (15 %) and the Geopolitical Risk Index from Caldara and Iacoviello (15 %).

The added pressure

Nine other measures then add points. Their weights, out of 100, are:

• Temperature against the 1991-2020 average: 10
• Disaster alerts in the last six months: 10
• Cereal yield below its 5-year average: 10
• FAO's list of countries needing outside food assistance: 15
• Severe food insecurity: 15
• Unemployment: 10
• Youth unemployment: 5
• Inflation: 15
• Refugees by country of origin: 10

Together these make a pressure figure from 0 to 100. Full pressure closes half the gap between the conflict base and 100, so the sum is: score = conflict + (100 - conflict) x 0.5 x pressure / 100. Points only add. A good figure or a missing one cannot lower a score, so a country at war stays high however calm its other figures look. A place with under half of the pressure weights measured gets no pressure points at all, and 41 map areas are in that position today.

What the figures cannot tell you

Annual figures lag. Crop and hunger figures run to 2024 and most others to 2025, so each line on the map shows its own year. A low cereal yield does not by itself mean a crop failed. Disaster alerts from GDACS are automated, unreviewed and, in its own words, "purely indicative". UCDP's Candidate data is preliminary and can change.

Share prices sit beside the score and are not part of it. They cover 47 markets, as monthly averages. Seeing them together does not show that one moves the other, and nothing here is financial advice.

The map uses Natural Earth's boundaries, which follow control on the ground. They express no view on any dispute. A dot in Crimea, for example, appears inside Russia's outline. Deaths count toward the country UCDP names, not the outline a dot falls inside.

Sources

• Conflict: UCDP Candidate Events Dataset, CC BY 4.0.
• Geopolitical risk: Dario Caldara and Matteo Iacoviello.
• Temperature: Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026, processed by Our World in Data. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains.
• Disaster alerts: GDACS, European Commission Joint Research Centre and United Nations.
• Crops and hunger: FAO via the World Bank, CC BY 4.0.
• Food assistance list: FAO GIEWS, Crop Prospects and Food Situation, July 2026, CC BY 4.0.
• Unemployment: ILO via the World Bank, CC BY 4.0.
• Inflation: IMF via the World Bank, CC BY 4.0.
• Refugees: UNHCR via the World Bank, CC BY 4.0.
• Share prices: OECD.
• Exchange codes: ISO 10383.
• Boundaries: Natural Earth.

Who made this

Bryan Arbelo built World Tension Map in Gold Coast, Australia. The site carries no ads. To report a wrong figure or ask a question, use the contact form at bryanarbelo.com.