A visible food-and-water reporting component
The main Geopolitical Outlook, Country table and classic diagnostics now expose drought, hunger and famine reporting. Each country context includes mention counts, scoring contributions, publication dates and links to the supporting articles. Country-risk outputs also carry the component's version and counters.
How the score changes
Reported mentions use base weights of 1.5 for drought, 2 for hunger, starvation or food insecurity, and 3 for famine. Warnings and risk wording receive half weight. Only the strongest qualified category per article contributes, with recency weighting, duplicate filtering and publisher caps. The component is capped at 12 points per country before the existing overall 0–100 clamp.
Overlapping hunger and food-shortage wording is removed from generic hardship scoring. The global board uses the new reporting input through its existing food-security driver, rather than adding another food-security driver. Its existing news, military and market trigger prerequisites remain in place.
Qualifications remain visible
Denial and resolution wording adds no positive points. Nonliteral phrases such as hunger strikes, Hunger Games and sports droughts are excluded. Country attribution uses bounded text rules, including protections for donor/occupation-actor references and overlapping country names. Ambiguous or unresolved locations can remain unassigned.
This is an English-language reporting signal over a bounded, dated news selection. It is not an official IPC famine determination, a physical drought measurement, a confirmed affected location or a calibrated probability. No eligible mentions does not establish that food stress is absent. Published historical forecasts are not rewritten.
Where to inspect it
Refresh Watchtower and open Geopolitical Risk. Expand the Drought, hunger & famine reporting section to inspect country contributions and source qualifications. The linked methods page documents weights, recency, caps and exclusions.