Blog Mar 9, 2017 · Ian Greenleigh · Originally published on Medium

The New York Times recently reported that international travel demand to the U.S. “dropped 17 percent after the implementation of [President Trump’s] travel ban.”

Much less attention has been paid to the government’s role in shaping travel patterns out of the U.S., but each year, the State Department issues dozens of warnings with the intent of keeping Americans safe as they travel abroad. But what countries are targeted by these advisories, and what risks do Americans face by ignoring them?

At data.world, we’re uniquely positioned to answer these questions. Our platform helps people join, explore, and visualize data from disparate sources to create new knowledge and solve tough problems. Thousands of datasets already live on data.world, with users adding more every day. Working with Priceonomics, we connected several fascinating datasets to reveal the connections between American deaths abroad, government travel warnings, and foreign travel.

Here are some of the most important findings:

• On the whole, there is a significant relationship between the number of American deaths abroad per capita and the number of travel warnings a country receives
• Mexico, Mali, and Israel have been targeted by the most travel warnings in recent years, but Americans are more likely to be killed in Thailand, Pakistan, and the Philippines
• Several countries with relatively high rates of American death have not been issued a single travel warning in the past 7 years, including Belize, Guyana, and Guatemala
• Several countries with relatively low rates of American death have been issued a relatively high number of travel warnings in the past 7 years, including Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia
• Overall, countries subject to travel warnings do not see notable declines in American visitors in the 6 months after a warning is issued

Before we go deep on the results of our analysis, please note that you can review, reproduce, and build on our analysis by checking out the data and script used to reach the conclusions you’re about to read. This data includes the only downloadable version of the State Department’s travel warnings feed that we are aware of, and several other fascinating clues. At the end of this article, we’ve included a few additional questions we’re curious about. Let’s create new knowledge together.

We began by identifying the countries that are most often targeted by U.S. State Department travel warnings. Travel warnings are issued when the State Department wants “you to consider very carefully whether you should go to a country at all” for reasons such as “unstable government, civil war, ongoing intense crime or violence, or frequent terrorist attacks.”

For example, here’s an excerpt from a warning dated February 15, 2017:

There is potential for death or injury in Lebanon because of terrorist bombings and attacks. Violent extremist groups operate in Lebanon, including U.S. government-designated terrorist organizations Hizballah, ISIL (Da’esh), Al-Nusrah Front (ANF), Hamas, and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades (AAB). ISIL and ANF have claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Lebanon. U.S. citizens have been the targets of terrorist attacks in Lebanon in the past. The threat of anti-Western terrorist activity persists, as does the risk of death or injury as a non-targeted bystander.

We filtered out warnings that had been issued for natural disasters, then ranked countries based on the number of warnings issued against them between October 2009 and June 2016. Here are the top 25.

Travel warnings issued between October 2009 and June 2016. Excludes natural disaster warnings.

Mexico tops the list with 28 warnings. Most countries in this ranking are participants in ongoing armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan) and/or are countries in which extremist groups regularly carry out terrorist attacks (e.g., Nigeria).

How do travel warnings square with the actual likelihood of being killed abroad?