Pick Your POICN: Introducing the Profiles of Incidents involving CBRN and Non-State Actors (POICN) Database

The majority of scholarship on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism relies on non-empirical theorizing or the in-depth examination of a handful of prominent cases. A key reason for the dearth of systematic analyses is the lack of a comprehensive database on CBRN terrorism events amenable to quantitative analysis. This article introduces the Profiles of Incidents involving CBRN and Non-State Actors (POICN) database, consisting of 517 CBRN terrorism–related events from 1990 to 2017. After laying out the general scope of the database and its unique approach to incident validation, the article illustrates POICN’s potential through preliminary observations of the data.