Killing civilians or holding territory how to think about terrorism

Many scholars of political violence conceptualize terrorism as an act of violence and measure each incident accordingly. Dugan and LaFree, co-creators of the largest open-source, action-based terrorism database (The Global Terrorism Database or GTD), provide an outline of the GTD's additive value to the study of terrorism. De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca offer an approach based on the control of territory that insurgents hold offers a clear measurement strategy. Victor Asal uses the De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca classification schema for sorting out cases that are less cited by conflict scholars. Findley and Young conclude that there are costs associated with each, action-based approaches can lead to overcounting of terrorist events, but that the actor-based approach leads to significant undercounting of terrorist events and exclusion of highly relevant events.