The Computational Event Data System

The Computational Event Data System uses automated coding of English-language news reports to generate political event data focusing on the Middle East, Balkans, and West Africa. These data are used in statistical early warning models to predict political change.

The twenty-five-year project was originally based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas where it was known as the Kansas Event Data System (KEDS) project, and then was moved to the Department of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University from January 2010 to June 2013, where we could never figure out an acronym that didn't sound like a skin disease. It is now hosted by Parus Analytical Systems.

The work has been funded primarily by the U.S. National Science Foundation including grants SES-9410023, SES-0096086, SES-0455158, SES-0527564, SES-0921027 and SES-1004414. Additional support has been provided by the University of Kansas General Research Allocation Fund and a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship.

To find out more about the Computational Event Data System, its goals, and its products please follow the links above, or if this is your first visit to our site, you may wish to start with the basics:

Note:
The "C" in "CEDS" is pronounced as a voiceless velar stop (IPA 109: [k]) to be consistent with "Computational." The acronym is thus pronounced, well, "KEDS." Imagine that.