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The Strategic Risk system provides a composite dashboard that synthesizes all intelligence modules into a single risk assessment, combining convergence detection, country instability, and infrastructure monitoring into actionable risk levels.

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Strategic Risk Overview

The Strategic Risk Overview synthesizes all intelligence modules into a single risk assessment.

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Composite Score (0-100)

The strategic risk score combines three components:
ComponentWeightCalculation
Convergence40%min(100, convergence_zones × 20)
CII Deviation35%min(100, avg_deviation × 2)
Infrastructure25%min(100, incidents × 25)

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Risk Levels

ScoreLevelTrend IconMeaning
70-100CriticalEscalatingMultiple converging crises
50-69ElevatedStableHeightened global tension
30-49ModerateStableNormal fluctuation
0-29LowDe-escalatingUnusually quiet period

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Unified Alert System

Alerts from all modules are merged using temporal and spatial deduplication:
  • Time window: Alerts within 2 hours may be merged
  • Distance threshold: Alerts within 200km may be merged
  • Same country: Alerts affecting the same country may be merged
When alerts merge, they become composite alerts that show the full picture: 
Type: Composite Alert
Title: Convergence + CII + Infrastructure: Ukraine
Components:
  - Geographic Convergence: 4 event types in Kyiv region
  - CII Spike: Ukraine +15 points (Critical)
  - Infrastructure: Black Sea cables at risk
Priority: Critical

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Alert Priority

PriorityCriteria
CriticalCII critical level, convergence score ≥80, cascade critical impact
HighCII high level, convergence score ≥60, cascade affecting ≥5 countries
MediumCII change ≥10 points, convergence score ≥40
LowMinor changes and low-impact events

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Trend Detection

The system tracks the composite score over time:
  • First measurement establishes baseline (shows “Stable”)
  • Subsequent changes of ±5 points trigger trend changes
  • This prevents false “escalating” signals on initialization

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Pentagon Pizza Index (PizzINT)

The dashboard integrates real-time foot traffic data from strategic locations near government and military facilities. This “Pizza Index” concept, tracking late-night activity spikes at restaurants near the Pentagon, Langley, and other facilities, provides an unconventional indicator of crisis activity.

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How It Works

The system aggregates percentage-of-usual metrics from monitored locations:
  1. Locations: Fast food, pizza shops, and convenience stores near Pentagon, CIA, NSA, State Dept, and other facilities
  2. Aggregation: Activity percentages are averaged, capped at 100%
  3. Spike Detection: Locations exceeding their baseline are flagged

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DEFCON-Style Alerting

Aggregate activity maps to a 5-level readiness scale:
LevelThresholdLabelMeaning
DEFCON 1≥90%COCKED PISTOLMaximum readiness; crisis response active
DEFCON 2≥75%FAST PACEHigh activity; significant event underway
DEFCON 3≥50%ROUND HOUSEElevated; above-normal operations
DEFCON 4≥25%DOUBLE TAKEIncreased vigilance
DEFCON 5<25%FADE OUTNormal peacetime operations

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GDELT Tension Pairs

The indicator also displays geopolitical tension scores from GDELT (Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone):
PairMonitored Relationship
USA ↔ RussiaPrimary nuclear peer adversary
USA ↔ ChinaEconomic and military competition
USA ↔ IranMiddle East regional tensions
Israel ↔ IranDirect conflict potential
China ↔ TaiwanCross-strait relations
Russia ↔ UkraineActive conflict zone
Each pair shows:
  • Current tension score (GDELT’s normalized metric)
  • 7-day trend (rising, falling, stable)
  • Percentage change from previous period
This provides context for the activity levels. A spike at Pentagon locations during a rising China-Taiwan tension score carries different weight than during a quiet period. News clusters are automatically enriched with nearby critical infrastructure. When a story mentions a geographic region, the system identifies relevant assets within 600km, providing immediate operational context.

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Asset Types

TypeSourceExamples
Pipelines88 global routesNord Stream, Keystone, Trans-Siberian
Undersea Cables86 major cablesTAT-14, SEA-ME-WE, Pacific Crossing
AI Datacenters313 clustersAzure East US, GCP Council Bluffs
Military Bases226 installationsRamstein, Diego Garcia, Guam
Nuclear Facilities100+ sitesPower plants, weapons labs, enrichment

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Location Inference

The system infers the geographic focus of news stories through:
  1. Keyword matching: Headlines are scanned against hotspot keyword lists (e.g., “Taiwan” maps to Taiwan Strait hotspot)
  2. Confidence scoring: Multiple keyword matches increase location confidence
  3. Fallback to conflicts: If no hotspot matches, active conflict zones are checked

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Distance Calculation

Assets are ranked by Haversine distance from the inferred location: 
d = 2r × arcsin(√(sin²(Δφ/2) + cos(φ₁) × cos(φ₂) × sin²(Δλ/2)))
Up to 3 assets per type are displayed, sorted by proximity.

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Example Context

A news cluster about “pipeline explosion in Germany” would show:
  • Pipelines: Nord Stream (23km), Yamal-Europe (156km)
  • Cables: TAT-14 landing (89km)
  • Bases: Ramstein (234km)
Clicking an asset zooms the map to its location and displays detailed information.

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Server-Side Risk Score API

Strategic risk and Country Instability Index (CII) scores are pre-computed server-side rather than calculated in the browser. This eliminates the “cold start” problem where new users would see no data while the system accumulated enough information to generate scores.

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How It Works

The GetRiskScores RPC handler (get-risk-scores.ts):
  1. Fetches recent protest/riot/battle/explosion/civilian-violence data from ACLED (7-day window)
  2. Fetches auxiliary sources from Redis: UCDP conflicts, outages, climate, cyber threats, fires, GPS jamming, Iran events, OREF alerts
  3. Computes CII scores for 24 Tier 1 countries using the same formulas as the frontend
  4. Derives strategic risk from weighted top-5 CII scores
  5. Caches results in Redis (10-minute TTL, 1-hour stale fallback)

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CII Score Calculation

Each country’s score combines a static baseline (40%) with a dynamic event score (60%), plus supplemental boosts and floors. Baseline Risk (0-50 points): Static geopolitical risk reflecting structural fragility.
CountryBaselineRationale
Syria, Ukraine, Yemen50Active conflict zones
Myanmar, North Korea, Cuba45Civil unrest, authoritarian
Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Venezuela, Mexico35-40Regional tensions, organized crime
Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, China, India20-35Moderate instability
Brazil, Mexico15-35Variable instability
Germany, UK, US, France, Poland, UAE5-10Stable/low risk
Event Score blends four sub-components:
Sub-componentWeightScoring
Unrest25%Log2 dampening for democracies (multiplier < 0.7), linear for authoritarian states. Base capped at 50, plus protest fatality boost (up to 30), plus outage severity boost (TOTAL 30pts, MAJOR 15pts, PARTIAL 5pts, capped at 50)
Conflict30%Weighted ACLED events (battles x3, explosions x4, civilian violence x5), sqrt-scaled fatalities, civilian boost, Iran strike severity, OREF alert boost (IL only: 25 base + 5 per alert)
Security20%GPS/GNSS jamming hexes (high: 5pts, medium: 2pts, capped at 35)
Information25%Reserved (0); no server-side news data
Floors (minimum score guarantees):
Floor typeThresholdTrigger
UCDP active war>= 70UCDP intensity level 2+
UCDP minor conflict>= 50UCDP intensity level 1
Advisory do-not-travel>= 60UA, SY, YE, MM
Advisory reconsider>= 50IL, IR, PK, VE, CU, MX
Supplemental Boosts: Advisory boost (+15/+10/+5), OREF blend boost for IL (+15 active + history tiers), climate (+15 max), cyber (+10 max), fires (+8 max).

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Event Significance Multipliers

Events in some countries carry more global significance than others:
MultiplierCountriesRationale
3.0xNorth KoreaAny visible unrest is highly unusual
2.0-2.5xChina, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, CubaAuthoritarian states suppress protests
1.5-1.8xTaiwan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Venezuela, UAERegional flashpoints
1.0-1.2xMexico, TurkeyModerate significance
0.5-0.8xUS, UK, France, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Israel, India, BrazilProtests are routine or events already captured by floors

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Strategic Risk Derivation

The composite strategic risk score is computed as a weighted average of the top 5 CII scores: 
Weights: [1.0, 0.85, 0.70, 0.55, 0.40] (total: 3.5)
Strategic Risk = (Σ CII[i] × weight[i]) / 3.5 × 0.7 + 15
The top countries contribute most heavily, with diminishing influence for lower-ranked countries.

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Data Sources

SourceRedis KeyUsed For
ACLEDFetched live via APIProtests, riots, battles, explosions, civilian violence, fatalities
UCDPconflict:ucdp-events:v1War/minor conflict floors
Outagesinfra:outages:v1Unrest outage boost (TOTAL/MAJOR/PARTIAL severity)
Climateclimate:anomalies:v1Climate severity boost
Cybercyber:threats-bootstrap:v2Cyber threat count boost
Fireswildfire:fires:v1Wildfire count boost
GPS Jammingintelligence:gpsjam:v2Security score (high/medium hex levels)
Iran Eventsconflict:iran-events:v1Strike boost with severity weighting
OREF Alertsrelay:oref:history:v1IL conflict boost + blend boost (activeAlertCount, historyCount24h)

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Fallback Behavior

When upstream data is unavailable (API errors, rate limits):
  1. Stale cache (1-hour TTL): Return recent scores
  2. Baseline fallback: Return scores using only static baselines and advisory floors
This ensures the dashboard always displays meaningful data even during upstream outages. The relay CII seed loop is disabled; the RPC handler computes scores on-demand with cachedFetchJson coalescing concurrent requests.