Global terrorism activity doubled over the last year

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) has announced the launch of a ‘Terrorism and Security Risk Manager’ online service, a new information source for insurers writing global terrorism risk. The service is provided in collaboration with Jane’s Information Group and is linked to the RMS Global Terrorism Risk Model to provide up-to-date information on terrorism activity for insurers to use in their analysis of terrorism risk around the world.

The data available in the information service provides the clearest picture ever established of the growing activity rates of global terrorism. Terrorism activity increased for the third consecutive year in 2005, following a decrease in 2002 after the initial military phase of the global war on terror and the removal of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. In the past twelve months the number of ‘macro’ terrorism attacks (car bombs or worse) worldwide has more than doubled from the previous year. This excludes Iraq, where the insurgency has increased to a rate averaging more than two damaging attacks a day during 2005. Terrorism activity continues to spread to more countries, with macro attacks occurring in more than 30 territories last year, compared to 20 the year before. In the past eight years, 76 countries have experienced some form of a macro terrorism attack.

The collaboration between RMS and Jane’s involved a complete categorisation of a catalogue of 23,000 terrorism events over the past eight years in order to provide insurance companies with a sophisticated online search engine to analyse data on targeting, attack modes, and activity trends in 228 territories worldwide. In addition, Jane’s has provided a unique analysis and scoring system of the counter-terrorism environment in each country, and provides news, analysis and commentary, profiles of terrorist and insurgent groups, and city risk tiering within each country.

RMS has quantified the risk of terrorism to different types of property assets, business interruption, and human casualties in countries and cities throughout the world. Out of 228 countries, the analysis classifies 88 territories at moderate risk for terrorism property losses where the expected average losses exceed $2 million annually, and 35 territories as high risk with expected losses of more than $20 million a year. Some countries have higher casualty risk than property, so these are rated separately and combined in an overall classification of terrorism risk. RMS recently published a poster-sized map of global terrorism risk depicting the risk in each country. Copies of the map can be ordered on the RMS web site at www.RMS.com

RMS continues to analyse future trends and to involve a wide range of international experts in providing risk analysis. In a recent RMS seminar in New York on managing terrorism risk, Dr. Bruce Hoffman of RAND provided an analysis of future trends for terrorism showing that while much of the growing risk is currently focused on Iraq, it is increasingly expected to spread to other areas as the Iraq insurgency dies down and jihadists return to their native countries. Western Europe in particular is likely to face increased risk when this occurs. An update on current trends in terrorism risk will be presented at a forthcoming RMS seminar in London on October 21st.

•Date: 14th Oct 2005 • Region: Worldwide • Type: Article •Topic: Terrorism
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