Researchers from the Netherlands-based Water, Peace and Security partnership (WPS) have announced the creation of a global forecasting tool that can predict where conflicts arising from water insecurity are most likely to break out. The system uses artificial intelligence to create patterns from a wide rage of geographical and socio-economic data and can identify potential conflict'hotspots' up to a year in advance. Keep an eye on the world Get Geographical's latest news delivered straight to your inbox every Friday, plus a collection of free eBooks on the subjects that matter to you! Susanne Schmeier, a senior lecturer in water law and diplomacy at the HE Delft Institute for Water Education, which leads the WPS, explains that predicting these types of conflicts isn't as simple as it might first appear. 'There is increasingly a discourse that links water scarcity and security with conflict instability,' she says, 'but at the same time our understanding is quite limited as to what actually links them.' It isn't simply a case of conflicts increasing every time a water security incident occurs.