Geopolitical, social, and military crises affecting the academic environment - a world-scale typology of AUF universities based on GIS and spatial analysis tools

The territorial contexts in which the universities are supposed to function become more and more complex and involve different forms of military, social and political risks. This article examines potential methodological approaches for evaluating these risks, using the network of AUF universities as a case study. The data used for the evaluation are provided by the ACLED datasets of incidents at a world scale, and they were spatialized using classical GIS tools. The first methodological approach measures the university's exposure by placing them in different distance bands around the median centers of significant state and non-state actors responsible for the military conflicts between 2021 and 2025. The output of the second approach is a multivariate typology of the AUF universities, each class describing different forms of exposure to risks. The key findings underline the fact that there are substantial disparities between the AUF regions, in terms of exposure, with severe risks in Western Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.0 Based on the results of the research, a set of recommendations for policy design inside AUF was developed.