ABSTRACT
Geographical Aspects of Terrorism .......................................................................................... 244 Background .................................................................................................................................. 245
Potential Use of Geographical Modeling in Terrorism Studies ....................................... 245 Nation-Building ...................................................................................................................... 245 Understanding Cultures: Integration of HSCB and GIS Modeling ................................ 246
Researching Design and Methodology .................................................................................... 247 Study Area ............................................................................................................................... 247 The Data Set Description ....................................................................................................... 247 Point Density Analysis .......................................................................................................... 251
Results and Discussion ............................................................................................................... 251 Descriptive Statistics of Adverse Events by District ......................................................... 251 GIS-Based Analysis and Visualization of Adverse Events: The Case of Afghanistan ... 252
Mapping Regional Differences and Getting the Picture .............................................. 252 Three-Dimensional Display of Adverse Events ............................................................254 Mapping Adverse Events and Compared with Population Density .........................254 Geographical Modeling Using Point Density Analysis ...............................................255
Concluding Remarks and Further Work ................................................................................. 259 Megacity Use Case ...................................................................................................................... 263 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................264 References .................................................................................................................................... 265
Terrorism can be described as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons” (Denning 2000). As the rates of terrorism on local, regional, and international scales continue to increase, understanding and countering terrorism is more important than ever before. The understanding of terrorism and counterterrorism should begin with a solid grasp of the historical patterns of terrorist incidents. For the purpose of understanding these patterns, geographically oriented modeling should be performed.
