Counterterrorism Net Assessment Data Structure (CT NEADS)

START will conduct a three-part desk study culminating in the development of enhanced data collection frameworks for counterterrorism effectiveness. Part one will examine the state of empirical research on counterterrorism effectiveness building off previous START work conducted for the Department of Defense, which resulted in an online knowledge tool—the Influencing Violent Extremist Organizations (I-VEO) Knowledge Matrix. Part two will consider ways in which START’s terrorism data can be leveraged to measure counterterrorism effectiveness, taking START’s Government Actions in Terrorist Environments (GATE) project as one example.

Finally, START will use the information from the aforementioned efforts to develop an enhanced data collection framework, which will eventually enable the collection of data on “blue” (e.g., counterterrorism) actions and effectiveness, as well as additional data on “green” (e.g. relevant contextual data) and “red” (e.g., data on terrorist behavior) as desired, in a way that is optimized for integrated analysis alongside data from existing START databases (e.g., GTD, BAAD2, LEADIR). The enhanced data collection framework will be used to systematize data collection occurring at different levels of analysis. This will enable more efficient and accurate integrated analysis using both multiple existing START datasets, as well as with future START datasets. As such, this project will allow policymakers and practitioners to accurately and efficiently inform counterterrorism decision-making using multiple different types of datasets.