The geography of suicide terrorism in Israel

Palestinian suicide terrorism has been a key feature in the latest phase of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the past decade, and particularly since September 2000, there has been a substantial increase in the use of this type of warfare. Recent studies suggest that, contrary to common belief, suicide terrorism is highly rational and driven by strategic considerations. This article explores the rationality of Palestinian suicide terrorism from a geographical perspective. It is argued that suicide terrorism works along two parallel paths: rationality and randomness. It complies with geographical fundamentals, and target selection is highly rational, subject to spatial considerations such as distance, agglomeration, and accessibility. As the permeability to Israel became more difficult, suicide bombers and their organizers had to adopt more flexible practices which emphasized other spatial considerations. Timing is of importance both for strategic and tactical reasoning. Obstructing negotiations and peace talks has been a salient objective, but the exact timing of suicide bombings has been influenced by tactical considerations, which aim at maximizing casualties.     

Combating piracy and armed robbery in Asia: The ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre (ISC)

The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) Information Sharing Centre (ISC) is an international organisation that comprises 14 member countries in the region. Despite its many advantages, the ISC has some weaknesses, which when addressed could bring regional cooperation to a new level and which could make the ISC a model for other regions.     

An evaluation of the role played by remote sensing technology following the World Trade Center attack

Remote sensing technology has been widely recognized for contributing to emergency response efforts after the World Trade Center attack on September 11th, 2001. The need to coordinate activities in the midst of a dense, yet relatively small area, made the combination of imagery and mapped data strategically useful. This paper reviews the role played by aerial photography, satellite imagery, and LIDAR data at Ground Zero. It examines how emergency managers utilized these datasets, and identifies significant problems that were encountered. It goes on to explore additional ways in which imagery could have been used, while presenting recommendations for more effective use in future disasters and Homeland Security applications. To plan adequately for future events, it was important to capture knowledge from individuals who responded to the World Trade Center attack. In recognition, interviews with key emergency management and geographic information system (GIS) personnel provide the basis of this paper. Successful techniques should not be forgotten, or serious problems dismissed. Although widely used after September 11th, it is important to recognize that with better planning, remote sensing and GIS could have played an even greater role. Together with a data acquisition timeline, an expanded discussion of these issues is available in the MCEER/NSF report “Emergency Response in the Wake of the World Trade Center Attack; The Remote Sensing Perspective” (Huyck and Adams, 2002)     

Early Detection of Terrorism Outbreaks Using Prospective Space–Time Scan Statistics

Terrorism is a complex phenomenon with high uncertainty involving a myriad of dynamic known and unknown factors. It is and will remain a challenge to predict or detect terrorism outbreaks at an early stage. This research presents an alternative approach for modeling terrorism activity, one that monitors and detects space–time clusters of terrorist incidents using prospective space–time scan statistics. Such clusters provide indicators of potential outbreaks of terrorist incidents. To evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, we analyze the terrorist incidents in the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism's (START) Global Terrorism Database (GTD) from 1998 to 2004. Clusters of terrorist events are detected at each time stamp and life trajectories of these clusters are constructed based on their space–time relationship to each other. Through the life trajectories and trends of clusters, we demonstrate how space–time scan statistics detect terrorism outbreaks at an early stage.     

Gender,Place, and Social Contacts: Understanding Awareness of Vulnerability to Terrorism

Abstract

Creating resiliency, accomplished in part by individuals preparing for disaster, is the primary strategy outside of law enforcement for responding to the threat of urban terrorism. Individuals prepare when they perceive a need to do so, yet little is known about what shapes a person's awareness of vulnerability to terrorism. Because evidence indicates that social contacts act as conduits of information and affect perception of risk to natural hazards, it is possible that such contacts also affect terrorism vulnerability awareness. Because social contacts are also known to be systematically segmented by gender and location, we hypothesized that conversations about terrorism vary by gender and place, specifically the home and work place. Drawing on data from 93 interviews with householders in Boston, the study demonstrates that: (1) family networks generated discussions of home preparedness, whereas workplace networks engaged a wider variety of topics; (2) women discussed terrorism more frequently and in greater depth than did men; and (3) women heard more preparedness messages for the home than did men, whereas men undertook preparedness activities external to the home. The findings bridge geography and terrorism studies by theorizing emplaced and subjective human experiences that prompt conversations about terrorism. These conversations, in turn, help urban emergency managers and risk-hazards geographers promote rational dialogue and action vis-à-vis terrorism. Hazards researchers have shown that the more people discuss terrorism, the less they seek extreme and unwarranted responses.     

恐怖主义研究热点与前沿可视化分析

随着恐怖主义的快速发展,国际上对恐怖主义的研究也“水涨船高”,对恐怖主义研究的热点和前沿进行分析,有利于把握恐怖主义研究动态和方向,对研究者来讲具有重要的指导意义。文中通过文献计量的方法,借助CiteSpace文本挖掘工具,运用共被引分析、词频分析、时空序列和膨胀词探测分析等方法对恐怖主义研究的8216篇文献进行分析归纳,总结了恐怖主义研究的知识基础、主要研究视角、不同时期的研究热点和恐怖主义研究的前沿发展趋势。     

A Geographic Approach for Teaching about Terrorism

Geography is in a unique position to address the topic of terrorism both inside and outside the classroom and has much to offer in terms of crafting effective measures to counter some of the most pressing threats to international security. As little consideration has been given to teaching about this important subject matter at the university level, this article presents an upper-level special topics case study course offered on terrorism. A capstone project that required students to apply course concepts to a specific terrorist organization is examined and the article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of this pedagogical approach.     

INCIDENTS OF TERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1997–2005

ABSTRACT. The geography of terrorism remains underexplored. By focusing on the spatial patterns of terrorist attacks, the settings and land uses in which attacks occur, and the methods used to perpetrate violence, this analysis helps build a theory of terrorism geography. Between 1 January 1997 and 11 September 2005, 178 terrorist incidents occurred in the United States. Analysis of these incidents suggests three insights. At the national scale, terrorism in the United States clustered in large urban areas, with regional differentiation of terrorist motives and targets. At the scale of individual attack sites, terrorist motivations pinpointed offices, clinics, and public spaces; right‐wing violence, military, government, and infrastructural targets; and religious terrorism, commercial and special land uses. At the scale of individual interactions, terrorists crossed paths with victims in various ways. For example, the 2001 anthrax‐attack letters and lone‐wolf terrorism created alternative intersections of perpetrators with victims.     

Place ontologies and a new mobilities paradigm for understanding awareness of vulnerability to terrorism in American cities

There is increasing evidence that people interpret their risk from environmental hazards through places—such as urban neighborhoods. At the same time, heightened levels of mobility are theorized to be leading to a so-called “placeless society” and possibly nullifying theories of locality-based risk perception. The purpose of this study is to combine environmental risk-hazards scholarship with work in urban geography to explore the following question: is perception of vulnerability to terrorism influenced by place and mobility, and if it is, what is the relationship? Drawing on interviews with 93 householders in Boston, Massachusetts, I demonstrate that people perceive vulnerability via understanding the transportation environment as a place—not simply a conduit—and that these perceptions reflect larger societal structures, such as wealth and gender disparities, that combine with (im)mobility and human subjectivity to amplify or attenuate a person’s sense of vulnerability. These findings bring an understanding of subjective experience to the geography of transportation systems, which has not yet been theorized within the urban disaster literature.