Towards proactive airport security management: Supporting decision making through systematic threat scenario assessment

An airport is the gateway which facilitates access to air transport. As a reaction to very diverse attacks on the air transport system during the last decades a broad range of security measures has been introduced to mitigate possible threats. The challenge to provide a trouble free experience for the passenger and, at the same time, to operate more efficiently calls for a proactive approach. This requires the definition of future requirements that allow an adaptation of the security system. When dealing with uncertainty that future-oriented decisions inevitably display, it is important to gain as much knowledge as possible about a system's general structure. The approach described in this paper systematically documents elements and relationships of the airport security system. It consists of threat scenario elements as well as security measures. The development of a software tool, the so-called Scenario Builder, is described and its application for the identification of possible future threats explained. The presented approach offers intuitive access to the underlying structure of the airport security system. It provides decision makers with a possibility to interact with the system and anticipate effects of threat development, thereby enabling robust, future-oriented decisions.