Reference Resource: New Online Database Visualizes, Reveals Terrorist Networks and Behavior Over Time

New online from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) located at the University of Maryland.
From the START Web Site:

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has launched the Big Allied and Dangerous (BAAD) online platform. The innovative new tool features updated, vetted and sourced narratives, and relationship information and social network data on 50 of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world since 1998, with additional network information on more than 100 organizations.
Funded through the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate’s Office of University Programs, the underlying BAAD database was created and is maintained by the Project on Violent Conflict at the University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy.
The data allow analysts, scholars and the public to investigate trends in organizational attributes and how these correlate with issues such as lethality, target selection, and use of CBRN weapons. The social network data also characterizes relationships between violent non-state organizations as well as relationships between countries and violent non-state organizations.
For instance, a quick search for al-Shabaab reveals a detailed full profile: quick facts – year founded (2006), number of fatalities (1,663), ideology (religious) – and an interactive social network diagram demonstrating its alliances with al-Qaida and affiliated movements, Boko Haram and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Led by UAlbany professors Victor Asal and Karl Rethemeyer, the research team plans to expand the database and online platform to include more than 600 terrorist organizations.
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BAAD is drawn entirely from publicly available, open-source materials. These include electronic news archives, existing data sets, secondary source materials such as books and journals, and legal documents. All information contained in the dataset reflects what is reported in those sources.

Entities included in BAAD are defined as those organizations that have:

• Committed at least one terrorist attack as defined by START’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD) criteria between 1998 and 2012, and/or

• Used, attempted to use, or pursued a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon at least once between 1998 and 2012, as recorded by START’s Profiles of Incidents involving CBRN by Non-state Actors (POICN) dataset as having, and/or

• Committed at least 25 battle deaths in an insurgency between 1998 and 2012 in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Battle Deaths dataset.

Direct to BAAD ||| BAAD Global Network Visualization 2012
Read the Complete Launch Announcement

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Data Files, News, Profiles