Can we put a price on terror?

The economic impact of terrorism on the global economy costs tens of billions of dollars. Forbes pegged the impact at $90 billion and rising in November 2016. The Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP) has identified over 150,000 terrorist events in its Global Terrorism Index (GTI), and finds that while the number of attacks are dropping in some countries, they are increasing at alarming numbers in others.

As terror groups like ISIL change their tactics, the number of lone terror attacks has surged to its highest number ever. According to the IEP GTI, 98 percent of the terror-related deaths in the U.S. since 2008 have been carried out by individuals acting on their own. Fortunately, there are several similarities and statistical patterns to individual terrorist attacks, which provide some insight into creating effective counterterrorism operations.