electricsheepafrica/africa-idmc-event-data-for-cod

Democratic Republic of the Congo - Internal Displacements Updates (IDU) (event data)

Publisher: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) · Source: HDX · License: cc-by-igo · Updated: 2026-04-15

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Abstract

Conflict and disaster population movement (flows) data for Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The IDU (Internal Displacement Updates) dataset, provided by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), offers timely event data and provisional information on new internal displacements caused by conflicts and disasters. Representing the most recent available information over a 180-day time period, the IDU is updated daily and focuses on "flows" (new displacements).

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are defined according to the 1998 Guiding Principles as people or groups of people who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of armed conflict, or to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural or human-made disasters and who have not crossed an international border. The IDMC's event data, sourced from the IDU, provides initial assessments of these internal displacements, reflecting continually updated provisional information from various sources.

While the IDU offers early insights, the more thoroughly validated and curated "stock" (Total number of people leaving on internal displacement) and "flow" (population movements) estimates are available in the annual Global Internal Displacement Database (GIDD). Both datasets are accessible via API, with specific guidance on data access, structure, and limitations, including important preprocessing considerations for the IDU to ensure accurate analysis and avoid double-counting. For further detailed information and complete API specifications, users are encouraged to consult the official documentation at https://www.internal-displacement.org/database/api-documentation/.

The IDMC's Event data, sourced from the Internal Displacement Updates (IDU), offers initial assessments of internal displacements reported within the last 180 days. This dataset provides provisional information that is continually updated on a daily basis, reflecting the availability of data on new displacements arising from conflicts and disasters. The finalized, carefully curated, and validated estimates are then made accessible through the Global Internal Displacement Database (GIDD). The IDU dataset comprises preliminary estimates aggregated from various publishers or sources.

Each row in this dataset represents discrete events or incidents. Temporal coverage is indicated by the displacement_date, displacement_start_date column(s). Geographic scope: COD.

Curated into ML-ready Parquet format by Electric Sheep Africa.

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Dataset Characteristics

Domain	Conflict and security
Unit of observation	Discrete events or incidents
Rows (total)	108
Columns	29 (6 numeric, 17 categorical, 5 datetime)
Train split	86 rows
Test split	21 rows
Geographic scope	COD
Publisher	Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)
HDX last updated	2026-04-15

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Variables

Geographic — country (Dem. Rep. Congo), iso3 (COD), latitude (range -8.8535–2.3003), longitude (range 13.1435–30.9917), displacement_type (Conflict, Disaster) and 10 others.

Temporal — event_start_date, event_end_date.

Identifier / Metadata — id (range 208511.0–242792.0), centroid ([-5.9460209, 29.1967172], [-0.0623332, 28.7540799], [-1.1869031, 29.4461316]), event_id (range 29179.0–40747.0), event_name (Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - South Kivu (M23) - 2025, Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - North Kivu (M23) - 2025, Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - North Kivu (ADF) - 2025), sources (OCHA - DRC, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), IOM DTM - DRC) and 2 others.

Other — role (Recommended figure, Triangulation), qualifier (approximately, more than or equal to, total), figure (range 52.0–500000.0), created_at, description.

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Quick Start

from datasets import load_dataset

ds    = load_dataset("electricsheepafrica/africa-idmc-event-data-for-cod")
train = ds["train"].to_pandas()
test  = ds["test"].to_pandas()

print(train.shape)
train.head()

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Schema

Column	Type	Null %	Range / Sample Values
id	int64	0.0%	208511.0 – 242792.0 (mean 228663.3981)
country	object	0.0%	Dem. Rep. Congo
iso3	object	0.0%	COD
latitude	float64	0.0%	-8.8535 – 2.3003 (mean -2.2737)
longitude	float64	0.0%	13.1435 – 30.9917 (mean 28.2997)
centroid	object	0.0%	[-5.9460209, 29.1967172], [-0.0623332, 28.7540799], [-1.1869031, 29.4461316]
role	object	0.0%	Recommended figure, Triangulation
displacement_type	object	0.0%	Conflict, Disaster
qualifier	object	0.0%	approximately, more than or equal to, total
figure	int64	0.0%	52.0 – 500000.0 (mean 22702.0093)
displacement_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
displacement_start_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
displacement_end_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
year	int64	0.0%	2025.0 – 2026.0 (mean 2025.0463)
event_id	int64	0.0%	29179.0 – 40747.0 (mean 33449.8981)
event_name	object	0.0%	Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - South Kivu (M23) - 2025, Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - North Kivu (M23) - 2025, Dem. Rep. Congo: Non-International armed conflict (NIAC) - North Kivu (ADF) - 2025
event_start_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
event_end_date	datetime64[ns]	0.0%
sources	object	0.0%	OCHA - DRC, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), IOM DTM - DRC
locations_name	object	0.0%	Lubero, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kalemie, Tanganyika, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kalehe, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
locations_coordinates	object	0.0%	-5.9460209, 29.1967172, -0.0623332, 28.7540799, -1.1869031, 29.4461316
locations_accuracy	object	0.0%
locations_type	object	0.0%
displacement_occurred	object	4.6%
created_at	datetime64[ns, UTC]	0.0%
description	object	0.0%
combined_type	object	0.0%
esa_source	object	0.0%
esa_processed	object	0.0%

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Numeric Summary

Column	Min	Max	Mean	Median
id	208511.0	242792.0	228663.3981	235311.5
latitude	-8.8535	2.3003	-2.2737	-2.0519
longitude	13.1435	30.9917	28.2997	28.7699
figure	52.0	500000.0	22702.0093	8092.0
year	2025.0	2026.0	2025.0463	2025.0
event_id	29179.0	40747.0	33449.8981	30538.0

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Curation

Raw data was downloaded from HDX via the CKAN API and converted to Parquet. Column names were lowercased and standardised to snake_case. Common missing-value markers (N/A, null, none, -, unknown, no data, #N/A) were unified to NaN. 9 column(s) with >80% missing values were removed: event_codes, event_code_types, category, subcategory, type, subtype.... 6 column(s) were cast from string to numeric or datetime based on parse-success rate (>85% threshold). The dataset was split 80/20 into train and test partitions using a fixed random seed (42) and saved as Snappy-compressed Parquet.

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Limitations

• Data originates from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and has not been independently validated by ESA.
• Automated cleaning cannot correct for misreported values, definitional inconsistencies, or sampling bias in the original collection.
• Refer to the original HDX dataset page for the publisher's own methodology notes and caveats.

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Citation

@dataset{hdx_africa_idmc_event_data_for_cod,
  title     = {Democratic Republic of the Congo - Internal Displacements Updates (IDU) (event data)},
  author    = {Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://data.humdata.org/dataset/idmc-event-data-for-cod},
  note      = {Repackaged for machine learning by Electric Sheep Africa (https://huggingface.co/electricsheepafrica)}
}

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Electric Sheep Africa — Africa's ML dataset infrastructure. Lagos, Nigeria.