Jane’s: More attention should be paid to airport security function

More attention should be given to the way airport security staff function, according to a new report published by the prestigious Jane’s Airport Review, which focused on BEMOSA’s (Behavior Modeling for Security in Airports) initial findings.

The report, titled “Research seeks to boost the human factor,” indicates that the BEMOSA’s findings question many of the shibboleths of airport security.

It noted that BEMOSA proposes looking at an airport as a complex social organization.

Source: IHS Jane's

“Even a small airport comprises a number of different departments that have to work with each other, and there are outsourced workers such as caterers, maintenance staff and police [as well],” Prof. Alan Kirschenbaum, initiator and coordinator of BEMOSA told Jane’s. “The decision-making process in security at the airport is not made by individuals at all.”

Kirschenbaum remarked that existing protocols laid down by the EC for airport security contained a glaring omission: “There is not a single mention of people… in them – only technology.

“The problem is that people are neither totally rational nor logical,” Kirschenbaum added, referring to the need to establish training programs that allow enhanced decision making.

“The training program arising from BEMOSA will introduce something new in the world of social research: it will use simulation programs to generate scenarios based on real data. This rarely happens – most computer simulation programs are underpinned by assumptions about behavior,” he said.

Dr. Michele Mariani of Modena University, scientific manager of BEMOSA, pointed out in the article that the preliminary results meant that “one may conclude that there are complex social patterns taking place in airports that cannot be pictured solely on the basis of what rules/procedures/protocols/ expect. It appears that employees do not rely primarily on procedures or rules only.”

The report concluded that when BEMOSA’s final findings are released in 2012 they would probably point towards a deep cultural change in a sector that relies upon standard operating procedures (SOPs).