To harness the methods and resources of the social and behavioral sciences towards a better understanding of the formation and dynamics of terrorist groups and the social and psychological impacts of terrorist threats in order to aid the efforts to stop terrorist recruitment, disrupt terrorist organizations, and reduce the psychological and social impact of terrorist threats.

Develop standardized protocols and metadata for georeferencing all START databases.

Integration of spatial social science throughout the research program (use technologies such as GIS, remote sensing, geographic visualization) to understand where and why (the why of the where).

Develop new ways of visualizing and displaying such data—an exciting new research field call geovisualization.

Help advance the emerging field of vulnerability science through improvements in the methods, models, and measurement of vulnerability (what makes people and places vulnerable to threats; how does their previous experience with natural hazards affect their resilience to human-induced threats such as terrorism); and how can we mitigate or lessen the impacts.

Engage a multi-disciplinary research team to focus on these problems.

Population Vulnerability Analysis, Spatial Social Science and GIS

Shifting Terrorism Trends Across Time and Space

Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute
Department of Geography
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Phone: 803.777.1699
Fax: 803.777.4972
email: scutter@sc.edu