Paced Inspection Process Design of Security Check System in Beijing Subway

Abstract

With the increased occurrence of terrorist attacks at public venues, security check systems (SCSs) for subways have attracted more attention worldwide. In China, a two-stage SCS was successfully adopted for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and has been promoted in other cities. Because SCSs would generate additional operational costs and delays for passengers, improving their efficiency is a concern for subway managers. In this research, an attempt was made to optimize the current two-stage SCS in Beijing. The speed and accuracy operating characteristic curves, which described the relationship between inspection rate and rejection rate of the preliminary inspection, were investigated. Two types (Type A and Type B) of paced inspection processes were designed to improve the overall performance of subway SCSs. With field data collected from eight subway stations in Beijing, the proposed paced inspection SCS was verified to improve the overall performance of the current two-stage SCS. In the Type A paced scenario, there was an increase of 23.8% in capacity and 15.7% in accuracy improvement. Although no capacity increase was achieved by the Type B paced scenario, the accuracy improved by 3.8%. The paced inspection design proposed in this study would incur no additional costs while improving the efficiency for SCS and would provide a universal application form to use when conducting inspections for subway operation and management.