Creating a Data Archive to Facilitate Research on Understanding and Responding to Terrorism

The Terrorism Data Resource Center (TDRC) is an initiative of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at the University of Michigan's Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The TDRC will archive and distribute data collected by government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and researchers about the nature of intra- (domestic) and international terrorism incidents, organizations, perpetrators, and victims; governmental and nongovernmental responses to terror, including primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions; and, citizen's attitudes towards terrorism, terror incidents and the response to terror. It will also organize and streamline access to extant research and administrative data from across the world that are relevant to study of terrorism and the response to terrorism for descriptive and scientific analysis by academics and researchers. The TDRC is jointly managed by researchers at The University of Michigan and Michigan State University, and supported through a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Justice, the research, development, and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. This paper describes the rationale and organizing concepts for the TDRC.