Gauging Civil Unrest with Speed Data: The Societal Stability Protocol and the Intensity of Civil Unrest

Destabilizing events – whether they are political expression events, politically motivated attacks, disruptive state acts, or some other manifestation of discontent – can vary enormously in their intensity. It is important to capture differences in intensity because they can affect the impact of seemingly similar events or the reactions of others to those events. The SPEED project's Societal Stability Protocol captures a great deal of information on what can be considered " intensity indicators. " These indicators include such things as the type of weapons employed, the number of protesters, the number of people killed/injured, and the number of people arrested. Developing composite measures of intensity is complicated because different sets of intensity indicators are relevant for different types of events. This document reports the procedures that were used to derive intensity measures for the different categories of destabilizing events recognized in SPEED's Societal Stability Protocol.