Abstract
Terrorism event databases provide systematized descriptive information about terrorist attacks from unclassified sources making the attack the unit of analysis. These databases generally follow the classic journalistic format of providing information on who is responsible for an attack, what happened, where it happened, when it happened and to the extent that it is known, how it happened. There have been a dozen or more major systematic efforts to build terrorism event databases over the past four decades. Because terrorism is a type of behavior that is difficult to study by police reports or victim or offender surveys, event databases have come to fill an important role. At the present moment, the longest running, most comprehensive of these data bases is the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) maintained by the START Consortium at the University of Maryland. Because most terrorists seek publicity, event databases that rely on print and electronic media are likely more useful for studying terrorism than most other types of crime. Nevertheless, event data have important weaknesses, most notably media inaccuracies; conflicting information or false, multiple or no claims of responsibility; and government censorship and disinformation. We use the GTD to describe the characteristics of world-wide terrorism from 1970 to 2010. We conclude with some observations about the future of terrorism event data bases.
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Notes
- 1.
Although RAND did include some cases that were arguably domestic, such as cases in Israel and the Palestine territories.
- 2.
These data were downloaded on November 12, 2011.
- 3.
For this classification we treat the country or territory as the target. Thus, an attack on the U.S. embassy in Switzerland is treated here as a Swiss attack. Similarly, an attack on a Swiss ambassador living in the U.S. is counted here as a U.S. attack. Although the vast majority of cases in the GTD involve attacks where the location of the target and the nationality of the target are the same, there are some interesting variations across attacks depending on the geographical country attacked, the nationality of the perpetrators, and the nationality of the target. We are exploring these issues in greater detail in ongoing research.
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Appendix A Countries Listed Under Each Region According to GTD
Appendix A Countries Listed Under Each Region According to GTD
Region | Countries/Territories |
|---|---|
Australasia and Oceana | Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa (Western Samoa), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Wallis and Futuna, Tonga, and Vanuatu |
Central America and Caribbean | Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Virgin Islands (U.S.) |
Central Asia | Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan |
East Asia | China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan |
Eastern Europe | Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia |
Middle East and North Africa | Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Western Sahara, and Yemen |
North America | Canada, Mexico, and the United States |
Russia and the Newly Independent States (NIS) | Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Soviet Union, and Ukraine |
South Asia | Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Kashmir, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka |
Southeast Asia | Brunei, Cambodia, Guam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam |
South America | Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela |
Sub-Saharan Africa | Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe |
Western Europe | Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Corsica, Denmark, East Germany, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Isle of Man, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Vatican City, and West Germany |
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LaFree, G., Dugan, L. (2013). The Global Terrorism Database, 1970–2010. In: Subrahmanian, V. (eds) Handbook of Computational Approaches to Counterterrorism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5311-6_1
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