Resilient Urban Architecture for Counterterrorism: Spatial Patterns of ISIS-Related Incidents and a Preliminary Urban Design Assessment Framework

Spatial clustering does not show that specific built-form characteristics lead to the concentration of terrorist incidents, but it is common for incidents to be clustered in urban areas. This is an exploratory study that examines 7960 incidents of ISIS terrorism recorded in the GTD from 2012 to 19. Geocoded incident coordinates and Haversine great-circle distance were used to implement the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN). An epsilon radius of 50 km and MinPts = 15 were chosen for the primary model, and 15 parameter combinations were analysed to investigate the robustness of the results. The main cluster found was 18 clusters with 7403 incidents (93.00%), and noise was the other cluster (557 incidents, 7.00%). The bulk of incidents (6118) were in Iraq, while the second largest cluster was in Syria with 675 incidents. The results show high geographical concentration, which is mainly due to the operational geography of ISIS, the intensity of the conflicts, the levels of exposure, and reporting. The analysis does not directly measure architectural morphology, sight lines, surveillance, permeability, crowding, and emergency egress. Based on this, the study suggests an initial multi-scalar urban design assessment framework that includes hotspot analysis as a first step, followed by site-specific assessment using the urban security, CPTED and crowd safety, and evacuation principles. The contribution is methodological and involves showing how the large-scale incident data can help inform, but not supplant, detailed architectural evaluation.