The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base (TKB) was an online portal containing information on terrorist incidents, leaders, groups, and related court cases. [1] It was active from September 2004 to March 2008 and is now defunct, but the group profiles that were included in the knowledge base are now hosted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The TKB was sponsored by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), a non-profit organization funded by the United States Department of Homeland Security. A significant participant was Cyc, which encoded the knowledge base in mathematical logic, and allowed complex logical queries over the knowledge base. [2] [3]
The TKB contained historical information on terrorism dating back to 1968, with over 29,000 incident profiles, 900 group profiles, and 1,200 leader biographies. The TKB contained several features to analyze terrorism data, including graphing tools, interactive maps, and statistical summaries.
The TKB contains two separate terrorist incident databases, the RAND Terrorism Chronology 1968–1997 and the RAND Terrorism Incident database (1998–Present). While the former component tracked international incidents, the latter database includes both domestic and international attacks. The RAND Corporation is a global think tank founded in 1946 by the United States armed forces.
In addition to incident databases, the TKB contains information on several hundred terrorist groups and leaders. DFI International, a consulting firm based in Washington DC, is responsible for these group and leader profiles. Group profiles include information about group ideology, founding philosophy, current goals, as well as basic "quick facts" such as member strength and funding sources. Leader profiles contain information about the membership and role of key terrorist leaders, as well as the individual's history and current whereabouts.
The TKB also contains several hundred case profiles from the American Terrorism Study. Directed by Dr. Brent Smith (University of Arkansas) and Dr. Kelly Damphousse, the ATS is a database of individuals and groups indicted by the United States government as the result of an official FBI terrorism investigation. Case profiles contain a synopsis of the indictment as well as scanned copies of public record documents relating to the court proceedings.
The TKB also includes an interactive map with satellite imagery and overlay capabilities, allowing users to plot terrorist incidents as well as key infrastructure such as roads, pipelines, and natural resources. Other features include a graphing program known as the incident analysis wizard, interactive tables, an advanced search tool, and terrorism related news items.
Cyc is a long-term artificial intelligence project that aims to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base that spans the basic concepts and rules about how the world works. Hoping to capture common sense knowledge, Cyc focuses on implicit knowledge. The project began in July 1984 at MCC and was developed later by the Cycorp company.
Knowledge representation and reasoning is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can use to solve complex tasks, such as diagnosing a medical condition or having a natural-language dialog. Knowledge representation incorporates findings from psychology about how humans solve problems and represent knowledge, in order to design formalisms that make complex systems easier to design and build. Knowledge representation and reasoning also incorporates findings from logic to automate various kinds of reasoning.
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants. There are various different definitions of terrorism, with no universal agreement about it. Different definitions of terrorism emphasize its randomness, its aim to instill fear, and its broader impact beyond its immediate victims.
CycL in computer science and artificial intelligence, is an ontology language used by Douglas Lenat's Cyc artificial intelligence project. Ramanathan V. Guha was instrumental in designing early versions of the language. A close CycL variant exists named MELD.
Douglas Bruce Lenat was an American computer scientist and researcher in artificial intelligence who was the founder and CEO of Cycorp, Inc. in Austin, Texas.
THERMCON was the code name of an FBI operation which was launched in response to the sabotage of the Arizona Snowbowl ski lift near Flagstaff, Arizona, in October 1987 by three people from Prescott, Arizona, Mark Davis, Margaret Millet and Marc Baker. In a November 1987 letter claiming responsibility, the group called themselves the "Evan Mecham Eco-Terrorist International Conspiracy" (EMETIC). The group named themselves after Evan Mecham, the then-Governor of Arizona. The Arizona Snowbowl spent $50,000 repairing the damage.
As-Sa'iqa, officially known as Vanguard for the Popular Liberation War - Lightning Forces, is a Palestinian Ba'athist political and military faction created by Syria. It is linked to the Palestinian branch of the Syrian-led Ba'ath Party, and is a member of the broader Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although it is no longer active in the organization. Its Secretary-General is Dr. Mohammed Qeis.
In December 1973, Fatah, a Palestinian military organization executed series of attacks originating at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in Italy which resulted in the deaths of 34 people. The attacks began with an airport-terminal invasion and hostage-taking, followed by the firebombing of a Pan Am aircraft and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight.
Jamaat ul-Fuqraa' is a terrorist organization mostly based in Pakistan and the United States. Some of the approximately 3,000 members have planned various acts of violence, often directed at rival factions. Two Al-Fuqra members were convicted of conspiring to murder Rashad Khalifa in 1990, and others are alleged to have assassinated Ahmadiyya leader Mozaffar Ahmad in 1983 are the same as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, but this has not been confirmed. These allegations are primarily made by far-right organizations, many who believe the organizations are operating terrorist training camps in the United States. Muslims of America denies any connection.
The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) was a non-profit organization founded in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Supported by Department of Homeland Security and other government grant funds, it conducted research into the causes of terrorism and maintained the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base — which was an online database of terrorist incidents, groups, and other information. MIPT also worked in conjunction with RAND, for some of its research and analysis. The institute provided training and professional development dedicated to improving the skills of law enforcement officers.
Al-Badr is an Islamist militant group operating in the Kashmir region. The group was allegedly formed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in June 1998. It is believed the group was encouraged by the ISI to operate independently from their previous umbrella group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM). Prior to the group's separation from HM, they participated in the fighting in Afghanistan in 1990 as part of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-l-Islami (HIG) alongside other anti-Soviet Afghan mujihadeen. India and the United States have declared it a terrorist organisation and banned it. Pakistan has long been a difficult and disruptive neighbor of Afghanistan, increasing Afghanistan's instability by providing intelligence, weapons and security to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But now Pakistan is facing strong backlash both domestically and internationally against its policy of militant sponsorship.
The Charles Martel Group was a French far-right anti-Arab terrorist organization which operated in the 1970s and 1980s. It was named after Charles Martel, the Frankish military leader who defeated the Umayyad invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours in 732.
In 2003, there were 25 suicide bombings executed by 32 attackers.
2004 was most notably marked by a series of battles in Fallujah. See Fallujah during the Iraq War.
There is a long history of terrorism in Europe. This has often been linked to nationalist and separatist movements, while other acts have been related to politics, religious extremism, or organized crime. Terrorism in the European sections of the intercontinental countries of Turkey and Russia are not included in this list.
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is a database of terrorist incidents from 1970 onward. As of May 2021, the list extended through 2019 recording over 200,000 incidents, although data from 1993 is excluded. The database is maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. It is also the basis for other terrorism-related databases, such as the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is an emeritus Homeland Security Centers of Excellence at the University of Maryland, College Park that researches terrorism in the United States and around the world. It maintains the Global Terrorism Database, which includes over 200,000 terrorist attacks and which it describes as the "most comprehensive unclassified data base on terrorist events in the world."