Beginning in 1998 the Center of Excellence Disaster Management and Humanitarian Affairs sponsored the development of the ASIA system, a customized version of the VRA Knowledge Manager that focused on the Asia-Pacific region. The ASIA system provided a system to support early warning of contingencies and humanitarian events. In late 2001, in a development effort sponsored by World Vision International, the system expanded to support monitoring field security for humanitarian aid workers, leading directly to a global situational awareness tracking system used by large nongovernmental organizations and several intergovernmental organizations. VRA continues to support operations of a number of these systems operating throughout the Africa and Asia.
VRA’s roots extend into the academic research community, founded as it was on a decade of research into the effectiveness of social movements throughout the world. VRA continues to work closely with the academic community providing customized data sets on demand across a wide range of research efforts that require global, empirical data on reported events.