Aim (Armed Incident Management) is a public, digitised mapping tool developed by the Centre for Armed Violence Reduction (CAVR). Its aim is to assist stakeholders in any country to better prevent and respond to violence, especially in fragile communities and conflict-affected situations.
Aim assists those most in need: victims and witnesses of violence; community leaders; violence interrupters and prevention organisations; law enforcement agencies tracking illicit arms activity to detect and prevent armed violence; media; researchers and policymakers. The intended impact is that each group can be better supported, informed, connected, trained and recognised for their work. Some groups, such as violence interrupters, are also assisted to recruit more people.
Aim achieves this by collecting and publishing daily updates to its free digital knowledge base. These include:
- reporting of tip-offs, evidence and witness statements
- tracking of all reported prevention activities, violent incidents and responses
- publication of useful information and training content, such as evidence and case studies to show which violence prevention and response efforts work, and which don’t
- provision of tools for stakeholders to develop their own resources and plans, such as violence prevention campaign materials
Aim is currently piloted in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Ghana, with plans to roll it out in at least 30 violence-affected countries by 2030. CAVR developed the system in collaboration with stakeholders in user countries and with the assistance of more than 100 experts and students at Macquarie University, ranked in the top 1% of universities globally.
The publicly available incident information is scraped from media articles by a range of partner organisations, such as ACLED. More sensitive information is kept confidential and only accessible by relevant authorities, such as witness reports and confidential response information.
For each country, Aim includes the following digital systems: reporting, data management, information management including AI tools, communication and national data maps (public and law enforcement versions). The data maps show prevention activities, incidents and responses to those activities. They include dashboards and single-click report generation. They enable tracking so that stakeholders can:
- Identify response gaps or poor outcomes in their area of interest and follow them up
- Learn more about the responses that affect them, engage and gather additional evidence
- See and learn from the provinces and districts which are most effective in reducing incidents
Through greater sharing of relevant and timely information, Aim seeks to help create a virtuous cycle of activity. Improving reporting and evidence-gathering enables improved responses. As responses become more effective, community trust in law enforcement builds and reporting can be further improved. Additional information for media and content producers helps to challenge community norms which might support illicit arms and their use in certain circumstances. Improved connection between communities, law enforcement and local government can encourage and enable improved prevention coordination between stakeholders.
