Can science predict where terrorists will strike? Not quite. But researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB) have created a detailed map of where terrorism attacks have occurred since 1970 – and it reveals some big surprises.
The map’s accompanying study, conducted at the UMD’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), found that while certain areas (those surrounding Manhattan and Los Angeles, for example) have endured as terror ‘hot spots’ throughout the study, others have come and go. In the 2000s, for example, there has been a higher-than-average rate of attacks in Maricopa County, AZ, Phoenix’s county. King County, WA, on the other hand, was a terror hot spot in the 1970s and 1980s, but has been largely quiet since.
