Terrorism in Egypt: a comprehensive spatial, spatio-temporal, and statistical analysis

Terrorist attacks epitomize a direct threat to the security of Middle Eastern citizens as well as global stability. As one of the Middle Eastern countries, Egypt suffers from terrorism in terms of human life and economic loss. Studying the spatial distribution of terrorist attacks and factors that may affect their frequency is critical for understanding this violent behavior and helping decision-makers fight terrorism. This study examines the spatial distribution of terrorist attacks in Egypt between 2004 and 2019 and its correlated factors. To fulfill this aim, spatial and spatiotemporal analyses were applied to analyze terrorist attack hotspots in the country, and 14 geographical, natural, social, and economic factors were tested for significant correlation to terrorist attacks by utilizing statistical and geographical weighted regression (GWR) analysis. Spatial distribution analysis results for the whole study period revealed two main hotspots: one in Greater Cairo, the capital of Egypt, and the second in the North Sinai Peninsula. There were additional small hotspots in Alexandria City, the Nile Delta region, and the northern part of the Nile Delta. The statistical analysis concluded a significant positive correlation between terrorist attacks and the fragile state index, education index, precipitation, distance to the land boundary, population density, poverty index, economic freedom index, and unemployment rate. Whereas, freedom index and distance to maritime boundaries had a significant negative correlation with terrorist attacks. GWR revealed significant positive correlations between terrorist attacks and NTL, population density, precipitation, and temperature in the North Sinai Governorate. The same governorate showed a negative correlation between terrorist attacks from one side and topography and drought index from the other.