Open-Source Models for Famine Prediction
Andrew Jerel Peterson · 2025
We provide a basic codebase for creating early warnings of famine from data on food availability and prices. In contrast to models for predicting agricultural yield based on satellite imagery, these tools are meant to work in the context of rapidly-evolving situations, such as war affected regions where parties to the conflict may cut off access to food aid. We provide methods for resource-scarcity based models and price-models, along with utilities for conducting sensitivity analyses and diagnostic plots. We also provide Jupyter notebooks to illustrate model usage, alongside detailed code comments and technical documentation. Having found no similar repositories on GitHub, we aim for this resource to inform and enhance public discussions of famine prediction and response -- an endeavor that, as current crises in Sudan, Gaza, and elsewhere unfortunately illustrate, remains urgently needed.