The GTD was designed to gather a wide variety of etiological and situational variables pertaining to each terrorist incident. Depending on availability of information, the database records up to 120 separate attributes of each incident, including approximately 75 coded variables that can be used for statistical analysis. These are collected under eight broad categories, as identified in the GTD Codebook, and include, whenever possible:
incident date
region
country
state/province
city
latitude and longitude (beta)
perpetrator group name
tactic used in attack
nature of the target (type and sub-type, up to three targets)
identity, corporation, and nationality of the target (up to three nationalities)
type of weapons used (type and sub-type, up to three weapons types)
whether the incident was considered a success
if and how a claim(s) of responsibility was made
amount of damage, and more narrowly, the amount of United States damage
total number of fatalities (persons, United States nationals, terrorists)
total number of injured (persons, United States nationals, terrorists)
indication of whether the attack is international or domestic
Other variables provide information unique to specific types of cases, including kidnappings, hostage incidents, and hijackings.
