At times, it’s hard to keep up with the changing dynamics and players of the conflict in Syria.
Tracking the front lines in the fighting may become easier. The Carter Center has launched a new web-based tool that shows in near real time which groups control what areas of Syria. The tool relies heavily on social media.
The program was created with the help of Palantir Technologies and is available at here. The map analyzes social media to trace changes in territorial control between ISIS, the Kurds and their allies, the government and the opposition since Jan. 1.
“With Syrian peace talks set to resume next week, it’s important for the public to have as much information as possible about what is happening on the ground,” Hrair Balian, director of the Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, said in a statement. “Because it’s based on publicly available information, this dashboard has no military value. Its value is in contributing to public awareness about a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 people many of them civilians.”
The Carter Center has been using social media to track events in Syria since 2012.
The center recently expanded its collaboration with humanitarian organizations, training teams of analysts to use the ever-growing social media database, and working with local partners at Georgia Tech to build new tools to monitor and predict the movements of refugees.
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