Data Science and War Analytics: KSE War Damage Database, CEPR, CEPA Ukraine

Measuring the economic and material cost of an ongoing war — where destruction continues as measurement happens, where access to damaged territory is limited or impossible, where official statistics systems have been disrupted, and where complete information would have operational security implications — is a fundamentally different challenge from peacetime economic analysis. Ukraine's wartime analytics community, led by institutions including the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Ukraine Economics network, and think tanks including the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), developed methodologies for this unprecedented measurement challenge. The resulting damage estimates — consistently cited by international reconstruction planners, donor coordination bodies, and Ukrainian government briefings — became the foundation for recovery planning and the basis for reparations arguments in international legal forums.

Tymofiy Mylovanov and the KSE War Damage Database

Tymofiy Mylovanov — economist, former Minister of Economic Development and Trade (2019–2020), and President of the Kyiv School of Economics — led the development of KSE's Ukraine War Damage Tracker, which became the primary open-source database for quantifying direct infrastructure and asset destruction from the war. The KSE tracker, published online and regularly updated, estimated direct damage to Ukrainian infrastructure across sectors: housing, transport, education, healthcare, energy, commercial, industrial, and other assets. Its methodology combined satellite imagery analysis of destroyed structures, engineering cost estimation for reconstruction, Ukrainian government damage declarations, and OSINT verification. By 2024, the KSE tracker estimated total direct damage in the range of $150–$250 billion, depending on scope and methodology — figures widely cited in international discussions of Ukraine reconstruction financing. Mylovanov positioned KSE not only as an academic institution but as a policy-engaged analytical resource directly serving Ukraine's wartime governance needs.

Key War Analytics Organizations

CEPR Ukraine Economics Network

The Centre for Economic Policy Research — a London-based network of European economists — mobilized its Ukraine-related researchers into a coordinated Ukraine Economics network following the invasion. This network, publishing through the VoxUkraine and Vox-EU platforms, brought together academic economists working on Ukraine's macroeconomic conditions, fiscal sustainability, monetary policy under wartime inflation, labor market disruption from mobilization and emigration, and the economics of reconstruction. The network's policy papers reached European central banks, finance ministries, and reconstruction planning bodies — providing academically credible analysis to policymakers who needed to understand Ukraine's economic situation to make support decisions. CEPR economists also engaged directly with Ukrainian institutions, providing technical economic expertise that complemented Ukrainian policy staff working under wartime conditions with reduced capacity for deep analytical work.

Methodology: Quantifying War Damage

The KSE damage tracker's methodology addressed several fundamental challenges. Direct damage (physical destruction of assets) is estimated using reconstruction cost: what would it cost to rebuild or replace each destroyed asset at current prices? This requires estimating the type and scale of destruction for each asset (partial or total), determining appropriate reconstruction standard (same as before, or improved), and applying construction cost rates. Satellite imagery — from commercial providers including Maxar, ESRI, Planet Labs, and others — provides visual evidence of destruction for large structures visible from orbit. Ground-level verification (when accessible territory allows) validates satellite assessments. The methodology was developed in consultation with the World Bank and EU, producing figures comparable to the World Bank's RDNA assessments. A separate and more difficult question — economic losses beyond direct damage, including GDP decline, human capital loss from deaths, disability, and emigration, and long-term productivity loss — requires different modeling approaches that the KSE team also developed.

Macroeconomic Analytics Under War

Standard macroeconomic statistics — GDP, inflation, unemployment — faced extraordinary measurement challenges during the war. Ukraine's official GDP statistics (managed by Ukrstat) showed approximately 29% GDP decline in 2022 — one of the largest annual peacetime-equivalent GDP drops recorded for any country in the modern era. But "peacetime-equivalent" framing misunderstands the war economy: production for military use (explosives, military equipment, fortifications) is counted as GDP in standard national accounts, while destroyed capital stock represents a loss of national wealth not captured in flow GDP data. Inflation measurement requires price data collection from a functioning commercial system, which was disrupted in frontline areas. Unemployment statistics missed the mobilization, emigration, and disrupted employment relationships that characterized the wartime labor market. Ukrainian economists and international partners developed adapted measurement approaches — including using mobile phone data and electricity consumption as alternative economic activity proxies — to supplement disrupted official statistics.

Frequently Asked Questions

How reliable are Ukraine war damage estimates?

War damage estimates carry significant uncertainty that analysts acknowledge, though for different reasons than typical economic uncertainty. The primary challenges: satellite imagery covers visible above-ground destruction well but misses underground facilities, interior damage without exterior visible damage, and some military damage that is not publicly documented; access to occupied and frontline territories for ground verification is impossible for most assets; and the methodology for translating physical destruction into monetary values depends on construction cost assumptions that are themselves uncertain in wartime inflation environments. The KSE tracker's published methodology is transparent about these limitations, providing ranges rather than point estimates and distinguishing confirmed from estimated values. The figures are considered sufficiently reliable as order-of-magnitude estimates for reconstruction planning purposes — knowing whether total damage is $100B or $200B matters more for donor mobilization than whether it's exactly $175B versus $180B.

What data sources underpin Ukraine war analytics?

Ukraine war analytics draws on multiple complementary data sources: official Ukrainian government data (published where security restrictions permit), satellite imagery from multiple commercial and government sources, OSINT social media documentation, ICRC and UNHCR displacement databases, financial transaction data (where accessible), power consumption proxies for economic activity, mobile network activity as population proxy, customs and trade data from Ukraine's partners, and academic survey data from Ukrainian populations including diaspora. Each source has its own biases and gaps; combining them through data fusion methodology produces more robust estimates than any single source. The organizations active in Ukraine war analytics have developed data-sharing frameworks that allow multiple analysts to cross-verify findings, reducing the risk that any single dataset's biases distort overall estimates.

How do economists measure human capital losses from the war?

Human capital losses from Ukraine's war — deaths, disabilities, emigration of working-age population, disrupted education for a generation of children — are among the most significant long-term economic consequences of the conflict, and among the hardest to quantify accurately. Standard human capital valuation approaches (using present value of lifetime earnings for killed and emigrated individuals) provide one estimate, but these are sensitive to assumptions about earnings trajectories, discount rates, and return migration probabilities. Alternative approaches focus on demographic projection: modeling Ukraine's likely population size, age structure, and labor force composition under different assumptions about war duration, casualty rates, and emigration/return dynamics. These models inform reconstruction planning about the available future skilled labor force — a critical factor in Ukraine's ability to rebuild its economy.

What is the gap between reconstruction needs and current donor pledges?

Ukraine reconstruction financing analyses consistently identify a large gap between estimated reconstruction needs and current committed donor funding. Total reconstruction needs (the World Bank/EU/Ukrainian government collaborative RDNA) exceeded $400 billion as of 2024 estimates (recognizing that reconstruction costs scale further with ongoing damage). Committed international support — grants, loans, and infrastructure investments from the EU, G7, and multilateral institutions — was significantly lower, reflecting both the political limitations of long-term financial commitments in democratic systems and uncertainty about the final scope of damage (which depends on when and how the conflict ends). The gap analysis informed United24 and Ukrainian government advocacy for larger and longer-term committed international funding, and was central to discussions about using frozen Russian sovereign assets as a reconstruction financing source.

How does CEPA's analysis differ from academic economics output?

CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis) is a Washington and Brussels-based security-focused think tank that differs from academic economics institutions in its orientation: CEPA produces policy-relevant analysis for policymakers on timelines relevant to policy decisions (often weeks rather than years) rather than academic publications optimized for peer-reviewed citation. CEPA's Ukraine team covers military strategy, geopolitical dynamics, and economic security — providing integrated analysis that crosses the silos between security studies and economic analysis. Where KSE focuses on rigorous economic measurement and CEPR on academic economics, CEPA contextualizes these findings within strategic analysis of what Ukraine needs and what Western policy should provide. All three function as part of the broader analytical ecosystem providing the knowledge infrastructure that informed policymaking on Ukraine assistance and reconstruction planning.

Sources

1. Kyiv School of Economics. Ukraine Damage Tracker — Methodology and Reports. kse.ua, 2022–2024.
2. World Bank, European Commission, Government of Ukraine. Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment. worldbank.org, 2022–2024.
3. CEPR Ukraine Economics Network / VoxUkraine. Policy Papers and Analyses. voxukraine.org, 2022–2024.
4. Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Ukraine Program Reports. cepa.org, 2022–2024.
5. Ukrstat (State Statistics Service of Ukraine). Wartime GDP and Macroeconomic Data. ukrstat.gov.ua, 2022–2024.