Airport front-of-house vulnerabilities and mitigation options

Abstract

A method for risk-informed comparison of mitigation options in situations with large epistemological uncertainties is presented by example: that of an improvised explosive device (IED) attack at a generic airport front-of-house (FoH). Specifically, a probabilistic model is built and distributions of scaled fatalities from probabilistic combinations of vehicle-based IED and personnel-based IED threats are generated using Monte Carlo methods. A risk assessment of the threats is given from the statistics of the scaled fatality distributions. We consider the risk reduction due to a combination of mitigation options, including IED screening, vehicle stand-off, and interception and detection. Sensitivity and stress analysis show that the ranking of the options, by their risk reduction, is relatively robust to the epistemological uncertainty incorporated into the model. The qualified conclusion of the example is that vehicle stand-off is the priority risk-effective mitigation option for IED attack at a generic FoH.