The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist attacks around the world from 1970 through 2017.Here, explored and analyzed the data to discover key findings pertaining to terrorist activities.
Initially did the process of cleaning and unifying messy and complex data set for easy access and analysis. Used the bottom-up approach for analysis moving from the specific to the general trying to look for a pattern, if any. Started to search for pattern in the year-by-year analysis of total cases and casualties to get the general idea about the years with peak cases and casualties.
Then used the region wise cases to explore which region had what kind of casualties and trend since 1970, this gave the idea of the regions most affected during particular time periods.
Drilled down to country wise analysis to get the idea for the most suffered countries among those regions.
Next, what was the trend and which regions have suffered the most? Also, were able to find the attack type most prevalent across regions by terrorist groups. This provided the logical reason for the weapon type used and why.
Proceeding further figured out who were the targets and also searched sequence in casualties by targets (annually).
Crucial stage of this process was to find the perpetrators responsible. Examined these group activities by year, then by regions and then layered down to countries to get the estimate of the number of cases and casualties by top terrorist organizations.
Suicides were also on the search list to find the pattern and motive behind it.
Through different graphical and non-graphical representations, were able to examine the terrorism and its roots in further depth. Brief conclusions that could be arrived at were: most of the terrorist activities took place in highly dense areas like South Asia and Middle East; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India were the countries both in number of cases and casualties that suffered the most; Bombing/ Explosions had been the most preferred irrespective of the region; private citizens, military, police and businesses suffered the most; Taliban and ISIL were the most violently active terrorist groups; 2014 had been the year with the most number of cases and deaths.