Research overview: GIS incident databases and conflict surveillance systems

This overview reviews the development of geographic information system (GIS) databases and surveillance systems that systematically record big-cat conflict incidents for analysis and management. It synthesises efforts by forest departments, NGOs, and researchers to standardise reporting of depredation and attacks with location, date, species, and circumstance, enabling trend monitoring, hotspot detection, and evaluation. The literature discusses data-quality challenges, underreporting, misattribution, inconsistent protocols, and the value of integrating community reporting and mobile tools. The survey frames robust incident databases as the often-overlooked foundation of evidence-based conflict management, since reliable, spatially explicit, longitudinal data underpin nearly every analytical and adaptive approach to understanding and reducing human-big cat conflict.