The Failed States Index itself is just one of the many capabilities of The Fund for Peace’s content analysis software. The software has many other applications including specific risk assessment, and in-depth national-, regional- and provincial-level analysis.

Along with the Failed States Index, The Fund for Peace’s Conflict Assessment Software Tool (CAST) has been the foundation of the Fund for Peace’s Country Assessments Reports Service and Country Profiles Program, using the content analysis to provide in-depth assessments country-by-country.

CAST has been used to perform analysis at a sub-regional level, from providing an assessment following the floods in Pakistan’s Sindh province to demonstrating how the situations in Mindanao in the south of the Philippines and Luzon in the north can be significantly different. Such regional-level analysis is critical in properly understanding state instability. As nations vary greatly from one another, often the regions within countries will also vary greatly. A country with a significant amount of instability in one region may be perceived as itself unstable overall, although the rest of the country is not experiencing instability. Instances such as these may include countries like Colombia (where although the FARC insurgency continues deep in the jungles and along the frontiers, the major cities such as Bogota, Medillin, Cali and Cartagena enjoy relative calm) or the Philippines (where the situation in the capital Manila is significantly different to that experienced in the southern island of Mindanao). This regional analysis can not only further expand the understanding of a country’s situation, but can also be used to highlight precisely where the pressure points exist for a country, and under precisely what conditions.

This analysis, coupled with regional contextualization, provides a unique informational tool for policy-makers to identify serious pressures and to enact sensible, well-informed policies.