High Incidents Research Articles

Black Block Recorder: Immutable Black Box Logging for Robots via Blockchain

Event data recording is crucial in robotics research, providing prolonged insights into a robot's situational understanding, progression of behavioral state, and resulting outcomes. Such recordings are invaluable when debugging complex robotic applications or profiling experiments ex post facto. As robotic developments mature into production, both the roles and requirements of event logging will broaden, to include serving as evidence for auditors and regulators investigating accidents or fraud. Given the growing number of high profile public incidents involving self-driving automotives resulting in fatality and regulatory policy making, it is paramount that the integrity, authenticity and non-repudiation of such event logs are maintained to ensure accountability. Being mobile cyber-physical systems, robots present new threats, and vulnerabilities beyond traditional IT: unsupervised physical system access or postmortem collusion between robot and OEM could result in the truncation or alteration of prior records. In this letter, we address immutablization of log records via integrity proofs and distributed ledgers with special considerations for mobile and public service robot deployments.

Segmentation of Severe Occupational Incidents in Agribusiness Industries Using Latent Class Clustering

One of the principle objectives in occupational safety analysis is to identify the key factors that affect the severity of an incident. To identify risk groups of occupational incidents and the factors associated with them, statistical analysis of workers’ compensation claims data is performed using latent class clustering, for the segmentation of 1031 severe occupational incidents in agribusiness industries in the Midwest region of the United States between 2008–2016. In this study, severe incidents are those with workers’ compensation costs equal to or greater than $100,000 (USD). Based on the latent class clustering results, three risk groups are identified with injury nature as the most statistically distinctive classifier. The highest cost injuries include strain, tear, fracture, contusion, amputation, laceration, burn, concussion, and crushing. The most prevalent and statistically significant injury type is permanent partial disability. The study introduces a novel application of latent class clustering in the segmentation of high severity occupational incidents. The analytical approach and results of this study will aid safety practitioners in identifying occupational risk groups and analyzing injury patterns, and inform safety intervention plans to avoid the occurrence of similar incidents in agribusiness industries.

Methodologies Utilized and Lessons Learned in High Threat Environments and Mass Casualty Environments.

In May 2019, the author was awarded the Australian Tactical Medical Association (ATMA) study grant to attend the Special Operations Medicine Scientific Assembly (SOMSA) 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States of America. Whilst in the U.S. the author had the opportunity to hear many talks, attend labs and talk to many first responders in high threat and austere environments to learn about how they operate, and the lessons learned from their experiences.
 This report highlights the two objectives of the study grant:
 
 Record the key content and lessons learned by attendance at SOMSA 2019.
 Discuss techniques utilized and lessons learned by first responders operating in high threat environments and mass casualty incidents.
 
 The SOMSA brings together many like-minded pre-hospital, tactical, wilderness, austere, disaster and deployed medicine operators from all around the world to share their learnings with a primary goal to
 advance the art and science of special operations medical care. It is a great opportunity for military and civilian providers to learn, network and engage with industry partners showcasing innovative products and technology.

Academic freedom and an invitation to promote its advancement

AbstractAcademic freedom is under threat internationally. Several high profile incidents suggest that academic freedom is a principle neither well understood nor appreciated by key decision makers and stakeholders whom one might expect to champion it, be they in government or within the academy itself. Among those incidents are the arbitrary exercise of ministerial discretion to override the Australian Research Council expert peer review recommendations for allocation of funding, recent attacks on the credibility of academic publishing internationally, and the atrocious treatment of scholars by authoritarian regimes across the globe. In light of such developments, the membership of the Institute of Australian Geographers recently adopted a resolution that, inter alia, called on the Council of the Institute of Australian Geographers ‘not to be silent on the issue of attacks on critical scholarship, academic freedom and the integrity of academic procedures in higher education, research and publishing’. Given the complexity of the issues, this paper invites further discussion and debate on how Australian geography and geographers might better appreciate and advance academic freedom including via the promotion of scholarship that gives full effect to the principle.

Evaluating the Health Status of Injured People due to Road Accidents.

Road accidents are one of the major causes of loss of life, injuries and damage of property. The aim of this paper is to assess the overall health status (physical and psychological) of road accident victims and to propose a Health IT system to managing the assessment procedure. A prospective observational study was conducted among 474 people attended to the emergency department, after a road accident. 30% of the participants were 18-28 years old. After the road accident, most patients (67.1%) did not develop depression and 3 and 6 months after the accident, depression levels were higher. In contrast, the patients' QoL showed improvement over time. As road accidents seems to be a high risk incidents that can affect the health status of people, an Health IT system is suggested to contribute on the management of the assessment of the patients' health status.

Sinkhole susceptibility mapping in Marion County, Florida: Evaluation and comparison between analytical hierarchy process and logistic regression based approaches

Sinkholes are the major cause of concern in Florida for their direct role on aquifer vulnerability and potential loss of lives and property. Mapping sinkhole susceptibility is critical to mitigating these consequences by adopting strategic changes to land use practices. We compared the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) based and logistic regression (LR) based approaches to map the areas prone to sinkhole activity in Marion County, Florida by using long-term sinkhole incident report dataset. For this study, the LR based model was more accurate with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.8 compared to 0.73 with the AHP based model. Both models performed better when an independent future sinkhole dataset was used for validation. The LR based approach showed a low presence of sinkholes in the very low susceptibility class and low absence of sinkholes in the very high susceptibility class. However, the AHP based model detected sinkhole presence by allocating more area to the high and very high susceptibility classes. For instance, areas susceptible to very high and high sinkhole incidents covered almost 43.4% of the total area under the AHP based approach, whereas the LR based approach allocated 20.7% of the total area to high and very high susceptibility classes. Of the predisposing factors studied, the LR method revealed that closeness to topographic depression was the most important factor for sinkhole susceptibility. Both models classified Ocala city, a populous city of the study area, as being very vulnerable to sinkhole hazard. Using a common test case scenario, this study discusses the applicability and potential limitations of these sinkhole susceptibility mapping approaches in central Florida.

Characteristics of Prehospital Response to Terrorism: A systematic literature review

Background: Terrorism is increasingly the aetiology of mass casualty incidents. Improved prehospital response capability targeted to the unique characteristics of high threat incidents is an area of urgent focus. Gaps in current knowledge coupled with inconsistent reporting and difficulties in accessing data create difficult conditions for capability enhancement.
 Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted to describe the characteristics of prehospital response to terrorism from 2011 -2017. Papers were included if they described a prehospital response to a terrorist incident, were in English or translatable to English and full text was available.
 Results: 6115 records were located in the initial search of grey and published literature, with 71 retrieved for full text after screening of title and abstract. 23 papers were included in the final analysis, describing 6 separate terrorist attacks. The majority of literature was published by physicians, all were from Western countries with advanced Emergency Medical Services(EMS) and a standard reporting template was not identified. The level of evidence was low to very low. Themes of tactical triage, coordinated activation and response, use of damage control resuscitation and tactical casualty care were common throughout the papers.
 Conclusions: The paucity of high level evidence and systematic reporting of lessons learned in the prehospital terrorism response field requires a renewed push for access to data and the establishment of reporting systems that are inclusive of all responders.
 Keywords: Terrorism, Pre-hospital, Response, Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, Tactical Combat Casualty Care

Identifying opportunities to prevent work-related fatal injury in New Zealand using 40\u2009years of coronial records: protocol for a retrospective case review study

BackgroundImproving New Zealand’s poor workplace safety record has become a high priority following high profile workplace fatal incidents in 2010 and 2014. Existing routine official data are unable to reliably inform occupational safety policy and action in New Zealand. This case review study will examine work-related fatal injury (WRFI) to: i) determine their burden, rates and distribution; ii) identify high-risk groups, causes and circumstances; iii) analyse secular trends, and iv) examine the impact of historic occupational safety legislative reform.Design and methodsA comprehensive New Zealand WRFI dataset from 1975 to 2014 will be established using existing data for 1975–1994 combined with new data for 1995–2014 extracted from reviewed coronial case files. Data collection involves: 1) identifying likely cases of WRFI from national mortality records using selected injury external cause codes; 2) linking these to coronial case files, which will be retrieved and reviewed to determine work-relatedness; and 3) coding work-related cases. Annual WRFI frequencies and rates will be calculated and disaggregated by age, sex, employment status, occupation and industry to identify high-risk groups and compared across the time series. The circumstances of the WRFIs will be analysed in-depth. The impact of New Zealand’s Health and Safety in Employment 1992 Act, which resulted in deregulation of the previous legislative frameworks for occupational health and safety during a period of rapid labour market restructuring, will be examined by comparing rates before and after implementation of the Act.DiscussionThe resulting evidence will serve as the basis for policy development and practical interventions to reduce WRFI, targeting groups of high-risk workers, and for bench-marking of workplace safety performance in New Zealand.

Inhibiting Thermal Runaway in Large Format Li-Ion Batteries

NOHMs Technologies is developing novel safe solvent hybrid electrolytes for safe, high energy density, high voltage, and high-power lithium-ion batteries for mobility and consumer applications. Over the past 25 years there has been a proliferation in the use of lithium ion technology and with that ever-increasing market demand for higher energy density cells – demand primarily met by advancements in the cathode and anode. This proliferation has come with the increased rise of safety concerns. There have been high profile incidents of what is known as thermal runaway across a wide variety of applications ranging from consumer electronics to electric vehicles. It is well understood that thermal runaway occurs when the self-heating rate in the cell exceeds the heat dissipation out of the cell. This self-heating is the product of undesired side-reactions in the cell which are onset by abuse conditions such as excess heat, internal short circuits, etc. The key to inhibiting thermal runaway is to modify the cell such that the self-heating rate under abuse conditions is significantly reduced. Reducing the self-heating rate is important when considering battery packs that consist of many cells as is the case in electric vehicles, so that if one cell fails in a pack the thermal runaway does not propagate to adjacent cells. Given that market trends are moving away from low energy electrodes, our approach therefore is to modify the electrolyte system to reduce the overall cell self-heating rate. This is a tunable, drop-in solution to addressing the need for improving battery safety. The incorporation of NOHMs novel safe solvents into the electrolyte formulation is shown to impact the abuse tolerance of cells on both the material level, i.e. the electrolyte-electrode interaction and on the cell level. The presented electrolyte systems demonstrate reduced overall energy and peak heat flow in the exotherm profiles of high-nickel cathode materials as well as lithiated graphite via differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). With this approach, we demonstrate significantly lower self-heating rates in an accelerating rate calorimeter (ARC) heat-wait-seek test on 30 Ah and above high-nickel cathode lithium ion cells. Combined with good rate capability and cycle life NOHMs’ novel safe solvents present an improvement in battery safety without compromising battery performance. This approach carries significance in not just safer individual cells but also in safer overall battery packs.

Efficacy of Flushing and Chlorination in Removing Microorganisms from a Pilot Drinking Water Distribution System

To ensure delivery of microbiologically safe drinking water, the physical integrity of the distribution system is an important control measure. During repair works or an incident the drinking water pipe is open and microbiologically contaminated water or soil may enter. Before taking the pipe back into service it must be cleaned. The efficacy of flushing and shock chlorination was tested using a model pipe-loop system with a natural or cultured biofilm to which a microbial contamination (Escherichia coli, Clostridium perfringens spores and phiX174) was added. On average, flushing removed 1.5–2.7 log microorganisms from the water, but not the biofilm. In addition, sand added to the system was not completely removed. Flushing velocity (0.3 or 1.5 m/s) did not affect the efficacy. Shock chlorination (10 mg/L, 1–24 h) was very effective against E. coli and phiX174, but C. perfringens spores were partly resistant. Chlorination was slightly more effective in pipes with a natural compared to a cultured biofilm. Flushing alone is thus not sufficient after high risk repair works or incidents, and shock chlorination should be considered to remove microorganisms to ensure microbiologically safe drinking water. Prevention via hygienic working procedures, localizing and isolating the contamination source and issuing boil water advisories remain important, especially during confirmed contamination events.

Awareness, Concerns, and Protection Strategies Against Bloodborne Viruses Among Surgeons.

Background: Surgeons are at high risk of contracting infectious viruses such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) through exposure to patients’ blood. The purpose of this study was to assess the surgeons’ awareness of contracting bloodborne viruses. Methods: A cross-sectional study with a questionnaire distributed to 241 surgeons at King Abdulaziz Medical City - Riyadh (KAMC-R) during the period June 2017 through January 2018. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data collected using Stata®, v14 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, Texas, USA). Categorical variables were analyzed using Pearson chi-square test. P-value of < 0.05 was considered significant.Results: A total of 241 surgeons answered the questionnaire, 179 (74.3%) surgeons were male and 62 (25.7%) were female. The mean age ± standard deviation (SD) of male surgeons was 35.8 ± 11.0 years while for females was 33.3 ± 9.1 years. The majority of our cohort were vaccinated for HBV (96% in males and 97% in females). Two-thirds of the study cohort did not know the conversion rate post-needlestick injury by HIV, HBV, and HCV. Two-thirds of the study cohort think there is a need for HIV screening before surgery. Mixed answers were received from the cohort when asked about their concern regarding contracting HIV infection from their patients; only one-third of the surgeons were extremely concerned. When asked about the risk of needlestick injury during treating patients positive for HBV, the majority of the surgeons said no. However, a significant difference between the female and male surgeons was found in which 12 of the 62 female surgeons answered yes (19.4%) compared to 11 of the 179 male surgeons (6.1%) (p = 0.002).Conclusion: The majority of our surgeons are vaccinated for HBV. However, female surgeons appear to be at higher risk of needlestick injury from HBV patients. This requires further investigation into the reasons for such high incidents. More education is needed about bloodborne viruses.

The exposure and toxic effects of mercury in gold mining activities

Background: Mercury is used by artisanal — small-scale (ASM) gold miners throughout the World. In 2014, the Sudanese government produced over 60 tons of gold, which make Sudan ranked Africa's third-largest gold miner. Also, Sudan is ranked the 15th global producer. In 2015, over 1 million miners participated in gold mining and extraction. Objective: This study aimed to determine mercury health risk in Sudanese traditional gold mining activities area.&#x0D; Method: This is an analytical cross-sectional observational stud. The studied population was from ALTWAHEN near ABUHAMED. Urine analysis was supported by epidemiological questionnaires designed by (EPI INFO software) following WHO guidelines. Eighty-six respondents completed the questionnaire. The mercury level was determined in 58 urine sample by Petroleum Laboratories Using Direct Mercury Analyzer DMA- 80 instrument. The epidemiological data were analyzed by (EPI INFO).&#x0D; Result: 98% exceed concentration of 100 ug/L which contaminated concentration for occasionally exposed, mean urinary mercury concentration 2785 ug/L, the highest mercury concentration worldwide reported by our study 10250 ug/L, Symptoms in 58 patient showed as Problem finding correct word 46.6%, memory problem 27.6%, problem with thinking clearly 29.3%, nervousness 31%, sadness 46.5%, sexual problem 36.2%, headache 51.7%, excessive salivation 43%, drowsy 48.3%.&#x0D; Conclusion: In this study, the highest urinary mercury concentration was reported (10250 ug/L) compared to other studies. Mercury concentration with no significant difference between the miner groups and others. Also, this study found high incidents of neurological symptoms associated with neurotoxicity. The problem with thinking significantly correlated to the age weighted by mercury concentration. Only tremor significantly related to the time living in the mining area. Otherwise, no significant relationship between mercury concentration ,symptoms and time living in the area.&#x0D; Recommendation: conducting Interventional study by using chelation therapy, Gold miners should use safety tools, Activation of laws and conventions (MINAMATA convention).&#x0D;

Big data for smart safety: applying engineering control analytics to predictive safety

Traditional health, safety and environment (HSE) reporting communicates the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ of safety events. Organisations’ operations-data footprints are growing in volume and velocity but data are often siloed and can be of poor quality. This results in an inability to connect the dots and see through the ‘noise’, to identify patterns of high risk behaviour and root causes of high risk incidents to fully realise the true value of available data and deliver well informed decision making. Deloitte has been working with large organisations across the energy and resources industry, connecting traditional HSE data with contextual data, including employees, contractors, rosters, timesheets, training, and environmental and operational data to surface insights that would otherwise be hidden. By applying exploratory machine learning techniques to these datasets, the sector can gain new insights that were previously ‘hidden’ in data siloes. Drawing on lessons learnt, the paper explains how predictive analytical techniques can enable organisations to identify groups of employees at the highest risk of incidents and, critically, what differentiates these groups, to design tailored interventions and optimally allocate finite resources to manage HSE risk. The paper also describes key factors found to be driving high severity or repeat incidents and details how data conventionally used for asset management and operations optimisation can be analysed alongside HSE data to characterise potential control failures. The outcome is a framework that can be applied to provide continuous controls monitoring of material risks and critical assets.

Data-Driven Cybersecurity Incident Prediction: A Survey

Driven by the increasing scale and high profile cybersecurity incidents related public data, recent years we have witnessed a paradigm shift in understanding and defending against the evolving cyber threats, from primarily reactive detection toward proactive prediction. Meanwhile, governments, businesses, and individual Internet users show the growing public appetite to improve cyber resilience that refers to their ability to prepare for, combat and recover from cyber threats and incidents. Undoubtedly, predicting cybersecurity incidents is deemed to have excellent potential for proactively advancing cyber resilience. Research communities and industries have begun proposing cybersecurity incident prediction schemes by utilizing different types of data sources, including organization’s reports and datasets, network data, synthetic data, data crawled from webpages, and data retrieved from social media. With a focus on the dataset, this survey paper investigates the emerging research by reviewing recent representative works appeared in the dominant period. We also extract and summarize the data-driven research methodology commonly adopted in this fast-growing area. In consonance with the phases of the methodology, each work that predicts cybersecurity incident is comprehensively studied. Challenges and future directions in this field are also discussed.

КОНЦЕПТ БІЖЕНЕЦЬ: ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЇ В СУЧАСНІЙ УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ЛІНГВОКУЛЬТУРІ

The article deals with the study of diachronous and synchronous modifications of the semantic composition of the lexeme REFUGEE in Ukrainian linguistic culture. Based on the results of component analysis, thematic groups have been established and psycholinguistic factors affecting the formation of the concept REFUGEE in modern media content have been analyzed. Data comparison of the results of the component analysis, receptive and association experiments concerning positioning of the concept REFUGEE testifies that the number of semantic components of the lexeme «refugee» generally corresponds to the number of meanings found in lexicographical sources. At the same time, the content analysis has allowed to establish a significant extension of the meanings which specify: the causes of refugees, including social reasons and externals; emotional colouring of the concept; subject-object nominalization in which such components as `affiliation with the Eastern regions of Ukraine`, `directions of relocation` (characteristics of initial point and final destination), `military conflict in Ukraine as a reason of refugees`. New thematic groups testify to the extension of the meanings of the concept REFUGEE. Media content analysis showed that in Ukrainian ethnic culture the lexeme-verbalizer «refugee» acquires new specific meanings and transforms into linguistic culture. The technologized discourse of new media made it possible to define information concerns and systems of values of internet communicants. The results of the content analysis of high profile incidents which was conducted with the «Attack Index» service allowed to define their positive/negative colouring, frequent key words and key positions of the «war of discourses» going on around the issue of refugees.

Analysing the Geospatial Patterns of Hidden Impacts from Human-Elephant Interactions in the Bunda District, Tanzania

study was conducted in Bunda district, which is a Tanzanian community with high annual incidents of human-elephant interactions, to determine a geographical configuration of hidden impacts. These are indirect impacts and largely unreported adverse effects resulting from human and elephant interactions. These are the effects which usually go unnoticed and unreported due to the lack of visible damage. Spatial analyses of patterns of human-elephant interactions have focused on environmental to socio-economic perspectives rather than spatial aspects of hidden patterns. The study analyzed the distribution, proximity to protected areas, kernel density and hotspots analysis of hidden impacts. The study identified 327 hidden impacts, categorized into the abandonment of farms, marriage problems, delayed school attendances and restriction on movement. It ascertained the highest number of incidents (18.35%) from Kihumbu village and the lowest from Nyangere village (0.01%). Abandonment of farms constituted the largest number (77.4%) while marriage problems formed the lowest number (0.6%) of hidden impacts. The most hidden impacts occurred between 0 and 2000 meters from the boundaries of protected areas. There was a higher concentration of hidden impacts in villages bordering Grumeti Game Reserve than Serengeti National Park. The significant statistical level of adverse hidden impacts occurred in Kihumbu village. Imprecisely execution of tourist hunting operations could presumably be the causing factor for the high concentration of hidden effects nearby Grumeti Game Reserve. However, we recommend a comprehensive study for an intensive understanding of the spatial characteristics of other types of hidden impacts adjacent to protected areas.

The future of animals in tourism recreation: Social media as spaces of collective moral reflexivity

Over the last few years, a number of high profile incidents involving animals in tourism recreation contexts have sparked heated animal welfare debate on a global scale, giving rise to ethical movements mediated by various online platforms. This study applies a Critical Animal Studies approach and draws on the cases of the killings of Cecil the lion, Marius the Giraffe, Harambe the Gorilla, and Xanda (Cecil's cub) to analyse the role of digital movements and moral reflexivity in shaping the future of animals in tourism recreation spaces. We conceive of social media as digital spaces of Collective Moral Reflexivity (CMR) which signal heightened public engagement in human-animal recreational ethics. Findings highlight animal ethics in this context as a discursively evolving social construction, but one on which the public increasingly expects a more robust and compassionate ethical model of operation from the animal recreation industry.

Numerical study on thermal buckling of empty thin-walled steel tanks under multiple pool-fire scenarios

Fire incidents at fuel storage tank farms are high risk incidents due to the fact that can result in severe socio-economic losses, injuries, deaths and have a serious environmental impact. In the case of a tank fire, there is a serious possibility that the fire will spread to adjacent tanks. The research activity in this area is mainly focused on the prediction of the heat transfer characteristics of pool fires, the thermal response of neighbouring tanks (or target tanks) and the potential of fire spreading. On the contrary, the research for the structural integrity of tanks involved in pool fire scenarios is limited. This paper aims to study the thermal buckling behaviour of fixed-roof tanks in the case of pool fire scenarios, considering one or more burning tanks. To this end, different scenarios are examined, aiming to study the key factors (the burning fuel, the wind, the separation distance between tanks and the size of the burning tanks) that may affect the thermal buckling response of the target tanks. Semi-empirical models, available in the literature, are used for the calculation of the characteristics of flames that arise from burning tanks. Then, the problem is solved numerically, through the Finite Element Method. The heat transfer from the burning tanks to the target tank is treated through the open cavity option, and the response of the target tank is predicted in the same thermo-mechanical analysis. The basic objective is the investigation of the inherent fire resistance of thin-walled tanks and to predict their failure.

Reserved Optimisation: Handling Incident Priorities in Emergency Response Systems

Emergency (medical, fire or criminal) Management Systems (EMSs) are crucial for ensuring public safety and security. Typically in many cities, less than 20% of the cases received by EMSs belong to the extremely serious category and require immediate help. Rest of the incidents typically are less serious and thereby allow more flexibility in response time. Therefore, for efficient management of EMS requests, several EMSs now categorise an incoming emergency request into a priority level based on well studied ``triaging" methods. Leading research on optimising emergency response has either focussed on data-driven models for settings with homogenous incidents or on generic heuristics (that are not data-driven) in multi-priority incident settings. In this paper, we provide data-driven models that employ tiered optimisation of allocation and dispatch simultaneously to ensure high priority incidents are served effectively. To that end, we make the following contributions in this paper: (1) For a given dataset of historical incidents, we first provide an optimisation model that maximises the percentage of highest priority incidents served within a threshold response time, while ensuring threshold response times for other priority incidents. Apart from optimising the allocation, this optimisation model also provides a detailed dispatch strategy that fits the given set of historical incidents well; (2) To better handle high variance (spatial and temporal) in arrival of high priority incidents, we reserve a set of ERVs for high priority incidents. Our second contribution is in modifying our optimisation model to reserve a subset of ERVs for high priority incidents while considering a minor modification to nearest available ERV dispatch strategy; and (3) Finally, using a real-world EMS data set, we experimentally demonstrate that our solution with a detailed dispatch strategy outperforms the existing benchmark approach. Moreover, due to the presence of few high priority incidents and significant spatio-temporal uncertainty associated with them, we show that a simple dispatch strategy with reserved ERVs outperforms the detailed dispatch strategy.

Socio-economic Inequality or Demographic Conditions: A Micro-level Analysis of Terrorism in Jharkhand

A popular perception is that left-wing extremism has its roots in the phenomenon of socio-economic inequality. Yet, empirical work analysing this perception and exploring the links between left-wing extremism and socio-economic deprivation is limited. This article examines the relationship between socio-economic-demographic indices and left-wing extremism in the state of Jharkhand in India. The analysis tests the strength of the relationship linking left-wing terrorist incidents that occurred between the years of 2005 and March of 2012 and various socio-economic-demographic factors. The results suggest that the districts that report high incidents of terrorist attacks are not only linked to socio-economic inequality but also associated with socio-demographic conditions concerning state access and the lack of penetration by security and government agencies. In the conclusion, policy implications and future research for the state of Jharkhand are suggested.