DoD funds earmarked for counterterrorism decision making

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) has committed nearly $3 million to an effort addressing key terrorism-related datasets and counterterrorism decision making.

The funds are allocated to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) as a means of updating and enhancing datasets serving as inputs into DoD and intelligence community modeling and simulation efforts; threat, vulnerability and risk assessments; and visualization and decision-support platforms.

“START datasets are among the most robust sources of terrorism-related data in the world,” Amy Pate, START research director and acting executive director, said. “Through the partnership with CTTSO, START will be able to provide more timely data to decision makers and policy experts, while also facilitating the research of other scholars through increased collaboration.”

The DoD funding will support updates and expansion for four ongoing research efforts, per officials, adding the Big Allied And Dangerous (BAAD) 2 dataset tracks terrorist organizations over time, examining how group behaviors are impacted by factors such as collaboration, competition, size, ideology, and counter-terrorism strategies. It will also support the Leadership of the Extreme and Dangerous for Innovative Results dataset examines the organizational psychology of terrorist groups by providing quantitative assessments of their structure, organizational practices, human capital and leaders’ decision-making style. Additionally, the funding will support the Transnational Illicit Trafficking (TransIT) tool analyzes possible routes for smuggling radiological and/or nuclear materials into the United States as well as the Global Terrorism Database, which includes information on more than 180,000 terrorist attacks that have occurred worldwide since 1970.