A decision framework for managing risk to airports from terrorist attack.

Area of Science:

• Security Engineering
• Risk Management
• Operations Research

Background:

• Critical infrastructure assets require robust security measures against evolving terrorist threats.
• Effective budget allocation for security enhancements is a significant challenge for stakeholders.
• Existing frameworks may not fully capture attacker decision-making or defender response nuances.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an asset-level security risk management framework for critical assets.
• To aid stakeholders in optimizing security investments against terrorist attacks.
• To incorporate novel elements like partial attacker neutralization and dynamic loss estimation.

Main Methods:

• Modeling the security system of an asset and various threat scenarios.
• Developing a sequential decision framework for attackers and defenders.
• Estimating total losses from different attack outcomes and their impact on attacker choices.

Main Results:

• The framework was applied to a U.S. commercial airport security risk management example.
• Plausible threat scenarios and risk mitigation options were analyzed.
• A combination of blast-resistant cargo containers and perimeter video surveillance was identified as optimal.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework provides a novel approach to asset-level security risk management.
• The optimal security strategy for the airport involves specific physical and surveillance measures.
• This method aids in cost-effective allocation of security budgets for enhanced safety.