Global Terrorism Database II: 7,154 Terrorist Events, 1998-2004

7,154 terrorist events worldwide from 1998 through 2004, compiled by researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park. The GTD2 project aimed to create a sound empirical dataset on terrorism by coding incidents from publicly available, open-source materials. Information includes incident date, location, attack details, target and perpetrator information, weapons, and casualties.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal and geographic trends in terrorism based on incident date and location data.
• Profiling attack methods and target types based on the described attack and target information categories.
• Studying perpetrator characteristics and claims of responsibility based on the perpetrator information fields.
• Modeling casualty outcomes based on the described weapon and casualty information variables.

Strengths

• 7,154 verified events provide a substantive empirical base for analysis.
• Coding scheme developed by a committee of recognized terrorism and data collection experts.
• Clear, multi-criteria definition for incident inclusion ensures conceptual consistency.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Data may reflect geographic or source bias inherent to the available open-source materials from 1998-2004.

Provenance

Source

University of Maryland, College Park (Gary LaFree)

Collection Method

Coded from publicly available, open-source materials by a team of paid and volunteer researchers.

Time Range

1998-2004

Geography

Global