Crisis Group’s Early Action and Risk Tracking Hub (eEARTH) is live
After three years of research, prototyping and testing, The International Crisis Group – an organisation which provides independent analysis and advice on preventing, resolving and better managing deadly conflicts – launched the Early Action and Risk Tracking Hub (eEARTH) on the 15th of September 2025. eEARTH is an early warning platform for climate related conflict risks that combines data analytics with expert regional knowledge to anticipate resource-related conflicts. The platform uses satellite and other data, together with on-the-ground political analysis to offer a powerful framework for anticipating risks in the Horn of Africa and soon beyond.
The Global Challenges Foundation has proudly supported the development of eEARTH for the past three years, and are very excited that the platform has now been launched. Lewis Day, Communications Officer at GCF, sat down with Ulrich Eberle, Project Director, Climate, Environment and Conflict from Crisis Group to chat about eEARTH and how it can help ensure timely and effective action on interconnected climate and security risks.
Lewis: How, why, and when did eEARTH come about?
Ulriche Eberle: eEARTH began as an idea I first sketched out in 2021, when Crisis Group was exploring new ‘big bet’ initiatives. The gap was clear: resource-related pressures were driving instability, yet no system connected climate and resource risks to conflict dynamics in a way that could guide prevention. Policymakers were left in the dark, while humanitarian organisations were overwhelmed by multiple, converging crises.
Just before we began developing eEARTH, we had published a data visualisation showing how historic floods displaced pastoralists in South Sudan into the country’s south, where they became entangled in pre-existing tensions with host communities. By comparing interviews with pastoralists to satellite imagery, we realised we could retrace their story from space. That was the breakthrough: if we could fuse remotely sensed, impartial information with Crisis Group’s political analysis — and scale it with technology and AI — we could track risks across millions of places at once, even where access on the ground is limited.
Lewis: Who are the target users for eEARTH? Can you give a short example of an intended use case?
Ulrich: eEARTH is designed for people who need to know when environmental pressures could tip into conflict. That includes policymakers tracking fragile states, humanitarian organisations planning relief operations, and development actors protecting investments. Researchers and journalists can also use it to verify conditions on the ground.
Take Somalia as an example. A humanitarian planner can use eEARTH to see where rainfall forecasts overlap with recent clashes over grazing land. That helps them decide where to pre-position supplies or where to focus mediation efforts before tensions escalate. The aim is not simply to provide information, but to give users foresight they can act on.
Lewis: Can you explain a little about the pilot projects and how they helped shape the final product?
Ulrich: Our first pilots were in South Sudan and Somalia. We chose them deliberately: both countries face highly restricted access, making reliable information hard to obtain, while also being on the frontlines of climate change and resource pressures. If eEARTH could add value there, it could work almost anywhere. At the same time, both countries have engaged stakeholders, including UN climate advisors, which made it possible to test ideas and influence practice.
Lewis: When it comes to early warning platforms, how is eEARTH providing something new for decision and policy making?
Ulrich: Most early warning systems focus on a single dimension — climate, food, or conflict — and often update too slowly to be actionable. eEARTH is different in two ways. First, it integrates multiple stress factors — from rainfall and drought to conflict events and displacement — into one accessible platform that refreshes continuously. Second, it doesn’t stop at data: it connects those signals to Crisis Group’s political analysis, helping decision-makers understand not just where risks are rising, but why they matter and what should be done next.
Lewis: What were the biggest challenges the team needed to overcome in the development of eEarth?
Ulrich: One of the biggest challenges was that the policy space we work in is not naturally designed for tech innovations. Principles like the lean start-up — testing a minimum viable product and iterating — are hard to apply when the issue is conflict prevention. We cannot simply send an unfinished prototype to senior officials, because the bar for publication is rightly high.
Workshops we ran in Nairobi, Brussels and Washington D.C. acted as test runs, generating feedback that pushed us to simplify navigation, add features like trend lines and risk tables, and ensure analyst commentary was always visible. Those lessons are built directly into the version we launched last week.
Lewis: What types of data is eEARTH built upon and how does eEARTH incorporate the expertise of Crisis Group’s network of analysts to analyse and present insights from the data?
Ulrich: eEARTH brings together diverse datasets: satellite imagery on rainfall, drought and flooding; conflict event data; displacement and food insecurity data; and sources like NASA, the European Space Agency, and The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). These feeds are automated and refreshed regularly, so the platform offers near real-time visibility.
But the data is only half the story. What makes eEARTH distinctive is how it connects those signals to Crisis Group’s analysis and advocacy. Our analysts, embedded in or close to the conflicts we cover, can explain what the data means politically — who gains, who loses, and where risks may escalate. And because Crisis Group has the networks to bring insights to the right audiences, the analysis does not remain on the platform. We regularly share our analysis with members of the UN Security Council, shaped the COP28 declaration on Relief, Recovery and Peace, and supported UN missions and their climate advisors. That combination of impartial data, political analysis, and advocacy reach is what makes eEARTH unique.
What is your hope for eEARTH and the impact it can have in the near future and further down the line?
In the near term, I hope eEARTH helps practitioners and policymakers anticipate risks more effectively — whether that means pre-positioning aid, targeting mediation, or paying closer attention to regions at risk. Over the longer term, the ambition is larger: to help shift the global approach from reacting to crises once they escalate, to preventing them before they do. If eEARTH can support that shift, even in modest but concrete ways, it will make a meaningful contribution to peace building.