Findings from the American Terrorism Study (NIJ grant #1999-IJCX-0005 and DHS/MIPT grant #lO6- 113-2000-064) reveal that unlike traditional criminality, terrorists are much less spontaneous, engage in substantial planning activities, and commit ancillary and preparatory crimes in advance of a terrorist incident. Building on these findings, the goals of the current project were to determine whether (1) sufficient open source data exists to examine the temporal and spatial relationships that exist in terrorist group planning, and (2) if such data do exist, can patterns of routinized preparatory conduct be identified.

Pre-Incident Indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Indentification of Behavioral, Geographic, and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct