Open Data Spotlight: The Global Terrorism Database

Publishing data on Kaggle is a way organizations can reach a diverse audience of data scientists with an enthusiasm for learning, knowledge, and collaboration. For Dr. Erin Miller of START, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, making her organization's Global Terrorism Database available for analysis by Kaggle users has brought new awareness to their cause. In this Open Data Spotlight, Erin discusses how setting aside agendas and focusing on understanding this unparalleled dataset of over 150,000 attack events allows users to undertake constructive analyses that may defy common conceptions about terrorism. Read on to learn more about the Global Terrorism Database project and the ways users of open data can make valuable contributions to the organizations that make them possible. My role started out (more than 12 years ago) as a graduate assistant cleaning raw data, and now I manage the project team, workflow, resources, and interaction with end users and related research projects.