The Predictive Capability of Natural Disasters on Terrorist Attacks

The following is an abstract from a graduate thesis. 

This study aims to establish whether natural disasters predict terrorist attacks. The result adds to the existing field of study by examining a more specific element of the relationship between violence and natural disasters. The study was conducted using binary logistic models for four African countries. Many elements can cause and precipitate terrorist attacks, so the models include various types of natural disaster and civil unrest predictor variables to differentiate between potential predictors. Based on the data, specific actors and civil unrest event variables predict terrorist attacks, but natural disasters have no predictive capability on terrorist attacks.