Another Terrorism Database
Another database on incidents of terrorism globally has been opened online, this one by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.
Starting in late May, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at UMd. began offering a data base of almost 80,000 terrorist incidents for ready access.
“The START Center is making the GTD (Global Terrorism Database) widely available in an effort to increase understanding of terrorist violence so that it can be more readily defeated,” the center explained.
Currently, incident data is available through 2004. By next May, the site should be current through 2007.
For each listed incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualities, and – when identifiable – the identity of the perpetrator.
On April 9, Barrier Briefs noted the presence online of another valuable terrorism database, GlobalIncidentMap.com, that tracks terrorist events globally and overlays them on a Google map of the world.
Both data resources should be helpful to security planners interested in terrorism trends.