A new Small Arms Survey Handbook, Unplanned Explosions at Munitions Sites (UEMS): Excess Stockpiles as Liabilities rather than Assets, offers a historical overview of every known unplanned explosion at a munitions site (UEMS incident) dating back to 1979, and provides advice to states with advice on managing their stockpiles effectively and generating better data on these events.

The Handbook includes an overview of the scale and scope of the challenge;detailed guidance on using the Incident Reporting Template (IRT); and summaries of UEMS incidents by country, by sub-region and by year.

An online database providing periodically updated detailed information on UEMS events, now including an interactive map, is available on the Small Arms Survey website.

• Download the Handbook Unplanned Explosions at Munitions Sites (UEMS): Excess Stockpiles as Liabilities rather than Assets
• Visit the online database
• View the UEMS toolset

The Handbook is complemented by a series of Research Notes on the topic:

• The ‘UEMS Incident Reporting Template’ explains the need for accurate record-keeping and the sharing of systematized data on UEMS events, and provides a useful utility to record such information
• ‘Taking Stock of Excess Stockpiles: UEMS in South-east Europe’ (also available in BCMS and Bulgarian) gives details on the concentration of UEMS events in South-east Europe:
• ‘Unplanned Explosions at Munitions Sites’ (also available in Albanian, BCMS, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, and Slovenian) was released in May 2011, and updated June 2014, to give an overview of the scale of the problem and practical measures to reduce the likelihood of explosions. [link to revised version]

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