Global Terrorism Database

When performing threat assessments for a country or a region, one of the tools I use to get a basic understanding of terrorist activity is the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database. This free resource catalogs over 98,000 terrorist events from all over the world. The incidents span from 1970 to the end of 2010 (with annual updates planned). It's a remarkable collection of open-source incident reports that allow you to browse by country, perpetrator, causalities, attack types, target types (including NGOs) and more. In addition to viewing individual incidents you can create bar, line, and pie charts to get a visual handle on trends. Everything is easy-to-use and quick. It would be nice if the data was updated more frequently, but I'm not complaining. This a great site to visit when you find yourself in an analyst role.