Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD)

Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD)

Humanitarian Outcomes' database of major security incidents (killings, kidnappings, detentions held over 24 hours, and attacks causing serious injury) against aid workers, collected from media filtering, direct reports by aid organisations and security consortiums, and annual cross-checking. The about page documents the recorded fields (date, country, location/geocodes, victim counts, affiliation, staff type, outcome, means and context) and codebook categories; the incidents browse page returned 403 to curl on the day checked.

Coverage

Per the about page, geocoding covers incidents from 1997 onward (an IRIN effort geocoded over 1,000 incidents for 1997-2010; later incidents are geocoded by the AWSD team). Victim names and specific agency affiliations are withheld by design; institutional affiliation is recorded only as a broad category (UN/Red Cross/NGO/other). Total incident or record counts, update frequency and delay: Not stated on the about page.

Verdict

Use this for a humanitarian-security incident signal: killings, kidnappings, detentions and serious-injury attacks against aid workers, with date, location, victim counts, means and context. The about page says: "AWSD data is intended for research purposes and non-commercial use only. It is provided free of charge and in the spirit of open data. Access to our JSON API is granted on request: to obtain an API key, please complete our JSON API access request form." Citation is required: it "should be cited as "Humanitarian Outcomes, Aid Worker Security Database, aidworkersecurity.org"". Victim names and specific agencies are withheld by design. Only what the about page states is described here, since the incidents page returned 403 to curl on the day checked. Signal Lab links only.