Speakers: Jennifer Veilleux and Shlomi Dinar, Florida International University
Terrorist organizations destabilize governments through violent and coercive acts that include the use of water resources as a target, a weapon, a leveraging tool, a reason for violence, and a nation-building strategy. Scholars in security studies recognize water as a strategic national resource and consider the use of water in the context of conflict and cooperation in inter- and intra-state contexts, but have yet to systematically quantify and define how water is used in the case of terrorism.
This webinar will discuss methods to codify types of water-related terrorism and quantify events using the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, which contains descriptive incidents of terrorism from 1970-2016. Our collective analysis can help to:
- identify the number and type of global water-related terrorism incidents between 1970-2016;
- describe spatial and temporal trends of those incidents; and
- provide decision-makers information regarding water-related terrorism targets and risks associated when terrorist organizations strike these targets.