Abstract

Terrorist attacks have become a serious source of risk affecting the security of the international community. Using the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), in order to quantitatively study past terrorist attacks and their temporal and spatial evolution the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to classify the degree of damage from terrorist attacks. The various factors influencing terrorist attacks were extracted and represented in three dimensions. Subsequently, using MATLAB for analysis and processing, the grading standards for terrorist attacks were classified into five levels according to the degree of hazard. Based on this grading standard, the top ten terrorist attacks with the highest degree of hazard in the past two decades were listed. Because the characteristics and habits of a terrorist or group exhibit a certain consistency, the K-means cluster analysis method was used to classify terrorists according to region, type of attack, type of target and type of weapon used by the terrorists. Several attacks that might have been committed by the same terrorist organization or individual at different times and in different locations were classified into one category, and the top five categories were selected according to the degree of sabotage inflicted by the organization or individual. Finally, the spatiotemporal evolution of terrorist attacks in the past three years was analyzed, considering the terrorist attack targets and key areas of terrorist attacks. The Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa were predicted to be the regions that will be most seriously affected by future global terrorist events. The terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia are expected to become more severe, and the scope of terrorist attacks in Africa is expected to widen. Civilians are the targets most at risk for terrorist attacks, and the corresponding risk index is considerably higher than it is for other targets. The results of this research can help individuals and the government to enable a better understanding of terrorism, improve awareness to prevent terrorism and enhance emergency management and rescue, and provide a solid and reliable basis and reference for joint counterterrorism in various countries and regions.

Highlights

  • By grading the degree of damage associated with terrorist attacks, the severity of the damage caused by terrorist attacks on their targets can be clearly observed

  • Establishing an evaluation index system of terrorist attacks is a complex process involving factors related to the economics, culture, antiterrorism techniques, management, and other aspects of the attacked region

  • Based on the analytic hierarchy process, this paper presents the considered indicators in analytic hierarchy process, this paper presents the considered indicators in numerical form numerical form by introducing appropriate judgment scales to form a judgment matrix, by introducing appropriate judgment scales to form a judgment matrix, which quantifies those qualitative problems that are difficult to quantify and provides a basis for evaluation and decision-making

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Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of terrorist organizations, especially international terrorist attacks, it has been difficult to counter it with the power of only one country This problem requires improved research on the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of terrorist attacks [20,21]. 600 terrorist attacks in various regions of the United States from 1990 to 2011 were studied by Lafree [30,31], who found that terrorist attacks were more common in regions characterized by residential instability and high urbanization, and recommended that researchers and decision-makers should focus more on the underlying connections among measures of social disorganization, participation in terrorist attacks, and law enforcement. A few studies involved the performing of a quantitative analysis of terrorist attacks by considering the various influential factors Unlike natural disasters, such as earthquakes and typhoons, terrorist attacks have the characteristics of premeditation, suddenness and sociality, and they evolve spatially and temporally [32]. The research results are helpful for improving the pertinence and effectiveness of anti-terrorism strategies

Global Terrorism Database
Assessment of Terrorist Attacks
Principle of Indicator Selection
Index Selection and the Construction of an Indicator System
Determination of Indicator Weights
Hierarchical Model
Structural Judgment Matrix
Consistency Test of Judgment Matrix
Terrorist Attack Classification
Main Steps
Mining Data Features to Identify Criminal Masterminds
Problem Analysis
Analysis
Principle of Clustering Algorithm
Identification of Criminal Masterminds
Distribution
Analysis of Terrorist Targets
Analysis of Terrorist
Findings
Conclusions

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