A Case Study in Forecasting Global Unrest and Instability

What’s better than a stream of breaking event alerts? Accurate, timely information that delivers leading indicators of potential disruptions before they occur. If leaders receive early warning, they can make informed decisions that keep people, operations, and assets safe. The benefits of a proactive security approach may be clear, but adopting this strategy can be challenging. Currently, most organizations rely heavily on alerting tools that focus on breaking events as a main source of data and information. These tools are proficient in delivering information to inboxes after events occur. However, they are ill-equipped to routinely deliver predictive signals, which are essential in quantifying potential risks to uncover potentially disruptive events. The best way to establish a proactive security posture is to receive indicators and warnings of significant events, such as civil unrest, potential coups, security incidents, and military activities, as they build and before they happen. Seerist specializes in this very task.

Seerist's AI-Driven Early Warning System

Seerist empowers organizations to foresee and navigate potential risks, helping them maintain operational continuity even in the face of evolving challenges. By combining advanced AI-driven insights with expert human analysis, Seerist provides timely, accurate intelligence that enables proactive, informed decision-making. A few of the key components that make this possible include:

Seerist’s AI-Driven Early Warning System

To verify its capabilities, Seerist was recently evaluated by an independent third party to assess whether its technology can offer early detection of disruptive events in low-information environments. The evaluation revealed a strong correlation between Seerist’s AI risk forecasting models and pre-indicators of such events. The analysis focused on historical security events across remote regions of the African continent, including protests, riots, coups, military actions, and general violence. The results showed that Seerist’s AI and Risk Assessment models provided pre-indicators of these events with 70% accuracy. Following the evaluation, the team adopted Seerist as their solution provider.

Third-Party Validation

Seerist offers unparalleled access to vast volumes of data – over 200,000 relevant news and social media reports daily from over 5,000 unique news outlets and 21 social media platforms – delivering critical insights at a speed and scale beyond human capability. With automated data processing across over 100 languages, Seerist condenses thousands of hours of analysis into minutes, ensuring that decision-makers quickly receive the essential information needed to safeguard operations. In fact, what would take a human 10,439 days of reading can be accomplished by Seerist in just 15 minutes. By leveraging Seerist’s advanced technology to sift through immense quantities, an organization’s analysts can avoid wading through an overwhelming amount of data and focus on actionable insights instead of. Coupled with expert human validation and context, Seerist delivers not only speed but also reliability, making it an invaluable partner in any security intelligence strategy.

Senegal conducted its presidential elections on March 24, 2024. Leading up to this delayed election and the subsequent nationwide protests, Seerist’s system demonstrated its powerful predictive capabilities:

Seerist at Work: Senegal Presidential Elections

Overall, the trends in the Pulse scores, sentiment, number of hotspots, and verified events provide a clear indication of decreasing stability and unrest. These indicators collectively highlight the deteriorating conditions in Sudan, effectively forecasting the imminent security situations such as a coup. This pattern underscores the predictive capability of Seerist’s analytics in identifying and forecasting disruptive events, offering valuable insights for early warning and strategic response. With this information, a Seerist user was able to remove their people from the area four days before the event occurred, ensuring that people were kept out of harm's way and business operations continued as usual despite the civil unrest occurring in close proximity.

Seerist at Work: Sudan Coup Attempt

Seerist's AI-driven solution, working in tandem with experts around the world, is a powerful tool for predicting and detecting global unrest and instability. As illustrated above, the Seerist solution is an effective early warning system that consistently demonstrates its ability to:

The Security Intelligence Solution You Need

Events AI

Verified Events

Hotspots

Pulse AI

Events AI Seerist’s intelligence capabilities identify unusual patterns and trends, offering indicators of potential security threats and disruptions. This foresight allows organizations to anticipate issues before they escalate, ensuring that leaders can respond swiftly to protect their people and assets.

Events AI

Verified Events Human-verified insights enhance Seerist’s intelligence by validating significant events, allowing organizations to detect emerging risks with confidence. This layer of verification ensures that leaders have reliable data to guide proactive risk management and response strategies.

Verified Events

Hotspots Advanced algorithms track and analyze global events, highlighting unexpected developments as they arise. This real-time awareness helps organizations stay ahead of destabilizing trends, enabling a rapid response to evolving security events.

Hotspots

Pulse AI Seerist’s continuous monitoring of geopolitical and security stability offers a dynamic view of regional conditions. By detecting shifts in stability and emerging indicators of change, Seerist provides early indications that equip organizations with the insight needed to seize opportunities and mitigate potential risks effectively.

Pulse AI

In fact, what would take a human 10,439 days of reading can be accomplished by Seerist in just 15 minutes.

By leveraging Seerist’s advanced technology to sift through immense quantities, an organization’s analysts can avoid wading through an overwhelming amount of data and focus on actionable insights instead. Coupled with expert human validation and context, Seerist delivers not only speed but also reliability, making it an invaluable partner in any security intelligence strategy.

70%

ACCURATE

PRE-INDICATORS

The ability to anticipate and respond to emerging threats and instability is critical for organizations operating in dynamic environments. Seerist’s innovative early warning system, which combines artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and human expertise, provides real-time insights and predictive intelligence. Since its launch in 2022, it has proven its effectiveness in helping users navigate complex risks. A notable example is the Senegal presidential elections in early 2024.

These metrics highlighted escalating tensions in Senegal weeks before the election. The system detected the first news report related to potential instability on February 3, 2024, at 00:05 UTC—over 18 hours before mainstream media coverage began. This foresight allowed organizations to proactively adjust their business continuity plans. As nationwide protests erupted on February 9, 2024, and concerns about a potential coup spread, organizations using Seerist's insights successfully avoided disruptions. By acting on early warnings, they were able to mitigate risks associated with the unrest.

Pulse AI Stability scores revealed a consistent downward trend between January 27 and February 10, with a sharp drop on February 9, resulting in an overall decline of over 50% in stability. Verified Events The number of validated incidents rose significantly, peaking at 12 on February 9. News Reports Media coverage increased dramatically, climbing from 184 reports on January 27 to 570 by February 10. Social Media Activity Posts related to the situation surged, escalating from 13 reports on January 27 to 100 by February 10.

Detect stability changes: Pulse AI effectively identifies declining stability patterns days or weeks before major events. Provide timely alerts: Seerist often detects and reports on events hours or days before mainstream media coverage. Offer comprehensive analysis: By integrating multiple data sources and AI-driven analytics, along with insight from experts based in areas of interest with local knowledge, Seerist provides nuanced insights into developing situations. Enable proactive decision-making: Early warnings allow for strategic planning and response before crises fully develop.

As global uncertainties continue to rise, organizations may want to look to Seerist to add bandwidth and capabilities to their existing security team.

On September 21, 2021, there was a military coup attempt in Sudan, which was enacted with the goal of having members of the former regime to gain control of the state’s broadcasting buildings and military central command. Seerist's Pulse scores revealed a clear trend of decreasing stability in the two weeks preceding the coup:

Pulse Score fluctuated significantly, peaking on September 13 before dramatically dropping by the day of the coup. Sentiment in the region dropped by 3x between September 7 and September 21. Hotspots spiked notably on September 14 and 22. Verified Events increased significantly, peaking at six on the day of the coup.

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