Shifting Terrorism Trends Across Time and Space

Investigator:

Susan L. Cutter

Project Period:
2005-2009

Primary Findings:
This project assisted in the development of geo-referencing protocols for START’s Global Terrorism Database.. Improvements in geo-coding and procedures for terrorist incidents in the GTD was a direct result of this project. Distinct geographic patterns of terrorist activities exist at the international, national, and sub-national levels and these patterns shift over time and across space. The statistical documentation of such patterns (and shifts) is a major contribution of this project. Along with the substantive findings, the development of geo-spatial visualization tools for interaction and clustering of terrorist incidents is also another major contribution of this project. See http://www.spatialdatamining.org/software.htm#redcap for software downloads.

Methodology:
The project employed spatial analytical methods and tools. In particular, geo-coding and geo-referencing were employed to accurate assign locations to terrorist incidents for the GTD effort, and the subsequent enhancement of the US portion of the GTD. A variety of GIS-based query functions, analytical tools, and visualizations were used in the analysis and presentation of findings. The development of a spatio-temporal clustering tool for interaction data analysis and visualization was completed and deployed. For the improvements in the collection of US-based terrorist incidents, archival work was necessary and consisted of searches through newspapers, government documents, and other ancillary sources.

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