An OSINT conflict map that keeps its sources
WarWatch maps open-source conflict reporting: verified Telegram channels, geolocated incident feeds, GeoConfirmed's Bluesky feed and OSINT publishers such as Bellingcat and Oryx are read alongside wire services and regional press, classified for type and severity, and placed on a globe with the link to the original post kept on every marker.
Open sources WarWatch reads
Telegram channels
Geolocated incident feeds
GeoConfirmed
OSINT publishers
Wires and regional press
Public sensor data
From post to marker
- 01
Ingest
Every source is read on a schedule of minutes and each item is stored with its link, its publisher and the media the publisher attached. - 02
Pre-filter
A keyword filter discards items that cannot be conflict events, so the expensive step only sees candidates. - 03
Classify
A model assigns a type — bombardment, missile attack, aircraft downed, invasion, nuclear, or escalation, diplomatic, irrelevant — and only the first group can raise a map alert. - 04
Place and expire
The alert is placed at the best location the source gives, carries its source link, and leaves the map after five hours.
Items that do not become alerts still count toward the country’s severity score if they are judged to report an armed-conflict event, and remain in the intel feed and archive.
Not every source counts the same
Each of the 45 sources carries a credibility weight, from wire services and established OSINT publishers at the top to state media at the bottom. The weight feeds the priority ranking in the intel feed, so a report from a single low-weight channel does not read like one from a wire service. The weight is a property of the publisher, not a verdict on the item — an accurate post from a low-weight source is still accurate, and the link is there to check it.
Who works from an OSINT conflict map
- OSINT researchers who want an indexed stream of the channels they already follow, with the geography restored.
- Journalists using the map to find leads and the links to verify them.
- Analysts reading OSINT against wire reporting on the same screen.
- Students learning how open-source conflict reporting is gathered and where it fails.
What can go wrong, and what the map does about it
Failure modes of OSINT feeds
- Recycled footage: old video posted as today’s event.
- Misattributed location: the right event in the wrong town.
- Deliberate disinformation from channels aligned with a party to the conflict.
- Duplication: one event reported by ten channels reads as ten events.
What WarWatch does
- Keeps the source link and the publisher on every item.
- Weights sources by credibility and shows the weight’s effect in the priority ranking.
- Expires map alerts after five hours so stale reports do not accumulate as a false picture.
- Counts country severity on articles, so one event across many channels moves the score, not the map, in proportion.
For a longer guide to verification, read how to track global conflicts.
Frequently asked questions
- What is OSINT in conflict monitoring?
- OSINT — open-source intelligence — is analysis built from information anyone can access: news reporting, social media posts, satellite imagery, flight and ship transponder data, official statements and public datasets. In conflict monitoring it usually means geolocating and verifying footage and reports from the ground and combining them with public sensor data.
- Which OSINT sources does WarWatch read?
- Verified Telegram channels, geolocated incident feeds, GeoConfirmed's public feed, and OSINT publishers including Bellingcat and Oryx, alongside 40-odd news organisations. Each item keeps the link to where it was published.
- Does WarWatch verify OSINT reports?
- No. WarWatch classifies and maps reports; it does not geolocate footage or confirm events itself. Classification decides what is shown and how severely, not whether it is true. The source link is kept precisely so a reader can do the verification.
- How is an OSINT conflict map different from a live war map?
- In practice the terms overlap. An OSINT conflict map emphasises social and open-source channels — Telegram, X, geolocation communities — as inputs; a live war map may draw mostly on news wires. WarWatch reads both kinds and weights each source by credibility.
- Can OSINT feeds be wrong?
- Frequently. Old footage is re-shared as new, locations are misattributed, and some channels publish deliberately. A marker from an OSINT source should be treated as a lead until corroborated by an independent source.
Related resources
See the map
The live conflict map, the country dossiers and the intel feed are free to open. Premium adds critical alerts, the strait monitors, the supply-chain figures and the daily report by email.
WarWatch (war-watch.com) is a global conflict intelligence platform built on publicly available information: news wires, regional press, public OSINT feeds and open datasets. Conflict information changes quickly and early reports are often incomplete or later revised. Nothing on this site is a substitute for official security guidance, and no event shown here should be treated as independently confirmed unless a source says so.