START’s Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) database and portal was updated to include terrorism data for 2016.
The TEVUS portal compiles behavioral, geographic and temporal information about violent extremist crime in the United States from four databases, including the American Terrorism Study, the Global Terrorism Database, the U.S. Extremist Crime Database and Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States. With funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the portal is the result of work by researchers at the University of Maryland, University of Arkansas, University of Michigan, John Jay College, Seattle University and Purdue University.
“Bringing together these databases has been a multi-year effort on the part of many researchers and staff on many campuses around the country,” said START Research Transition Manager and TEVUS portal manager Sarah Fishering.
In addition to the yearly data, the recent update introduced a user guide, glossary and a Frequently Asked Questions document to aid potential users in understanding how to use the portal.
The portal allows users to access data related to terrorist incidents and extremist crime dating back to 1970.
There are currently 715 users of the TEVUS portal. Users span 28 countries and almost every U.S. State. They represent 470 organizations including 150 universities and colleges. Other organizations include multiple Department of Homeland Security offices, law enforcement agencies and media outlets such as The Economist and The Washington Post.
“It is our hope that customers like policymakers, law enforcement and analysts will be able to use TEVUS to make data-driven decisions regarding things like allocation of resources at various levels,” Fishering said.
The tool is useful to professionals as it allows users to build their own searches from all datasets on a single interface, linking the resulting data together. Without the portal researchers would have to grind through various individual databases and make data connections manually.
Fishering said, “Customers who use it will be able to develop an understanding of terrorism and extremism that is based on data, not anecdotes or rhetoric.”
For more information, and to request access to the portal, visit: http://www.start.umd.edu/tevus-portal.