Abdollah, Eun J and Bruce R. Ellingwood A Decision Framework for Managing Risk To Airports from Terrorist Attack Risk Analysis Vol. 35, No.2, 2015
The article illustrates the management of the asset-level risk; this is to help the investors of the critical assets in budgeting minimum allocation to increase their security and safety against any attack by terrorist. The thought out models framework the system of the property security evaluates several risk scenarios, and prototypes the chronological thinking of the terrorist during the operational attack. The article outlines the idea of the defenders in neutralizing the attack, approximation of the entire loss because of the attack, the successful and the unsuccessful levels of the violence, and finally the courses of the attack such as losses. The repercussion of the planned technique is illustrated in an instance concerning the safety risk in the United States commercial Airline management.
According to authors, civil infrastructure systems are the pillar of the current society and are important to the global and local success. They further point out that iconic value buildings and the civil infrastructure are the most preferred target by the terrorist. The article uses the terrorist attack that took place in the U.S on September 11, 2001. The terrorist targeted the Pentagon and World Trade Center. The incidence stunned Americans and the rest of the world in general. The WTC towers attack made the country lose an estimated 3000 people and a destruction of more than 30 million meters square building in the Lower Manhattan. Losses regarding property damage, earnings and cleaning up and the renovation of the site. Which, the article refers to short economic losses, was approximate $ 35 billion. The outcome of the attack made policymakers together with other decision makers from public and private sector to invest in creating and implementing threat management models to mitigate terrorism threats.
Civil infrastructure security safety is both challenging and complex. In addition, there various ways that terrorist can use to destroy the system and harm people; albeit, the invention because of the new technology provides guards with different ways of protecting infrastructure system against destruction from attackers. The owners of the civil infrastructure face the problem of choosing the most appropriate threat mitigation method. The challenge involves the selection of the most efficient method of safety and protection of the infrastructure within inevitable budget limitations. Bearing in mind the complexity of the unique civil infrastructure systems and several doubts in stages of the decision process, threat evaluation framework that suitably consider all involving parameters and compute the uncertainties at various stages are needed.
The article illustrates several proposed methods that can be used and valuation of an efficiency of several counterattack measures. Game-theoretic method is one of the examples, which attempts to model the connection between the defenders and the intelligent attackers. Some of the early researchers projected that the government and the terrorist in hostage scenario should adopt a negotiation approach model. Major came up with a game-theoretic strategy that involved choosing an ideal defensive plan using a zero game sum while Cornel and Geikema developed a model to set options among risks and response measures by connecting probabilistic decision analysis, game theory and threat evaluation using impact diagrams. Azaiez and Bier recently modeled a game-theoretical resource and distribution mode for securing parallel, series, and more overall systems. In addition, at the same time the system improves the distribution of defensive resources in the way that the terrorist expected the cost to destroy the system is increased. Despite the fact that most of the proposed threat assessment model offer powerful tool for risk mitigation, there are many assumptions made and such assumptions depends on the setting of the problem.
The second set of the method is based on probabilistic risk assessment. PRA have been used for more than 30 years to model a threat mitigation plan for multifaceted-engineered systems. The method recently has gained attention in evaluating threat attacks, informing the threat based decision, and studying safety risk from terrorist. To illustrate the application of their model Garrick recognizes and classified the susceptibility of the power systems to threat attack. McGill created a quantitative threat evaluation and management framework to back choice making for asset-level funds distribution concerning critical infrastructure and central resource safety from human risk circumstances. Consequently, Ayyub increases his framework to assess portfolio risk and the valuable asset by considering both manmade and natural hazards.
The article based on the PRA approach builds a comprehensive framework for risk management to help investors or shareholders of serious property with inadequate budget allocation aimed at increasing both security and safety against attackers. The authors considered the early study, which includes McGill that focused on the loss incurred when the attack is successful but ignores the loss that happens when the attack fails to take place. According to the article, one that makes a case in point is the hijack attempt by terrorist that took place on Feb 22, 1974, at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The attackers shot dead Maryland airport police and then took off by Delta Airline DC-9 airplane. The intention of the attacker was to kill the president by crashing the plane into the White House. FBI neutralized the threat before it could reach its goal, the attacker managed to assassinate one of the two pilots and to injure the other. The incidence outlines that even when the attack does not mature it stills courses damage and loss when they are partially neutralized, when the attackers are prohibited from progressing forward with their strategy, but they are not fully defused. The research introduces the idea of partial neutralization and approximates the likely total damage that is liable to happen from primary goal that have been achieved and the main target that terrorist fails to achieve. The attack may cause considerable damage, for example, human casualties, impacts on capital markets or infrastructure damage.
The article illustrates that the crash of the commercial plane has almost immediate results that include loss of the aircraft and passage casualties. For instance, if the aircraft smashes on a densely populated region there would be an increase in damage due to a large number of casualties, asset damage, and the cost of cleaning up the site. In addition, the loss of income due to airlines shutdown because of the attack and to decrease in air transport demand since members of the public are in the panic is approximated to be significant. To illustrate the nature of the loss, the authors used hijack that took place on September 11, 2001. The cost of the plane was approximated to be $100 million and the loss in terms of revenue to the industry was estimated to be $5.3 billion.
To mitigate the threat, the article describes five countermeasures. Among those five measures installation of the airport perimeter fence with blast resilient luggage vessels, which, includes video surveillance structure, was a preferable option with a ten years service time. The rest of the options the authors did not discuss because they are either not in public domain or are too expensive to implement. However, the five countermeasures are not the only existing measures alone as there others furthermore they keep on changing due to change in technology. From the article, it is clear that threat problems in the airports create job opportunities because the use of surveillance technology provides jobs opportunities.
Karber Philip Re-construction Global Aviation in an era of the civil aircraft as a weapon of destruction A. Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Spring2002, Vol 25 Issue p781 34p
The author discusses the September 11 attack, which had impacts that were both instant and long term on international aviation. According to the author, some of the short-term effects were overwhelmed loss of lives, the global war on terrorism, and the systematic disruption of flying off the airplanes. However, the long-term impacts were not part of the local devastation but consist of environmental change, which made even the longest species to starve. The article illustrates that after the attack the airport witnessed what the article refers to second order effect whereby passengers reduced from 9 to 7.5million in a week. Revenues were not spared as they reduced by more than a third, about half a million-aviation employees globally were demoted, one-tenth of the total U.S commercial planes were grounded, global airlines bleed profusely on the verge of bankruptcy, and ripple impact in the major interdependent sectors to the air transportation economy.
The author describes a fueled jet full of passengers as more destructive since it carries more explosive force than the tiny nuclear weapon. The attack on the World Trade Centre was innovated as it was meant to create second-order effects by releasing of the potential force capable of collapsing Twin Towers. The September 11 attack was not just effective than the last terrorist attack, but it showed that aviation was not only a target of the terrorist attack but is a weapon of destruction. The world is in an era where the both passengers and the innocent civilians on the ground are threatened by modern and upcoming threats in the weapon of destruction from civil aircraft. Furthermore, even before the attack, there was the problem in the international aviation systems. The article warns that the future of the aviation depends on the action of the people in the coming years, since it makes airlines more threatened and in the process completely change the future of the aviation internationally. In addition, the sense of danger in the nations has resulted in an extraordinary body of mitigating registration with an unusual treaty on the diagnosis of the problem, with unexpected disagreement on the mode of implementation.
Even if the industry can be encouraged by a double measure of restoring public confidence and enhancing security, there still exist preoccupied rules of stop the bad men which can threaten the system which is entrusted with to improve the general good by enabling the flow of an interconnected international society. The article presents an argument that tends to regulate conduct, define and constitute a system of relationship. That amalgamation of the changed rules that concentrates on person problems can result to radically altered system even when that is not the intention. Moreover, a well encouraged the person rules are; the public is required to understand the value of the public aviation and not to see it as an international system. On the other hand, when the guidelines are not enforced and observed the system of communication that is made on the assumption of their efficiency is to breakdown threat. The article discusses some of the mitigations that are required in order to eliminate terrorism threats but first it analyzes threats that face aviation industry.
(i) Terrorist threat changes to Aviation
The author is categorical that aircraft seizure has been in existence for a long time. The first incident happened in 1931 that was conducted by local revolutionaries who hijacked a Pan African flight. The other seizure took place in 1960 to U.S aircraft after that hijacking become a normal behavior. Before aircraft, threat has been in a form of hijacking which intern attackers held the...
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