Airport securityCosts of securing airports far outweigh the benefits: study
A recently published research paperconcludes that the funds allocated to secure the world’s major airports far outweigh the benefits. The authors write that “many of the assessed security measures would only begin to be cost-effective if the current rate of attack at airports in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia-Pacific increases by a factor of 10-20.”
A recently published research paper concludes that the funds allocated to secure the world’s major airports far outweigh the benefits.
Mark Stewart, an engineer at the University of Newcastle in Australia and an expert in risk-modeling, and John Mueller, a professor of political science at Ohio State University, have both written other studies in which they argue that Americans overestimate the risk of and impact from terrorist attacks, allowing this exaggerated fear to distort their lives.
Their recent study, published in the Journal of Air Transport Management, performs the same cost-benefit analysis used by engineers, insurers, and policymakers, and then applies it to airport security.
“This kind of analysis is pretty standard for other hazards,” Mueller says. “For example, if you’re planning to build some underground shelters for tornadoes in Alabama, the questions are exactly the same: How many lives do you save? How much does it cost? What is the likelihood of tornadoes?”
Businessweek reports that Stewart and Mueller calculated the costs associated with traditional airport security initiatives and compared them against the risk of an airport attack, the cost of damage from an attack in lives and property ( for the purpose of the calculation, a human life was valued at $7 million), and the effectiveness of particular security initiatives in preventing an attack.
The authors concluded that “many of the assessed security measures would only begin to be cost-effective if the current rate of attack at airports in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia-Pacific increases by a factor of 10-20.”
Stewart and Mueller also considered the cost of measures proposed to strengthen airport security including vehicle-search checkpoints, hiring more skycaps to monitor vehicles, and deploying more bomb-sniffing dogs.
The report does not take into account security initiatives that are meant to protect airplanes, such asTSA scanners, body searches, ID checks, air marshals, but it does calculate the cost associated with protecting air terminals — police patrols and blast barriers, among other measures. The authors acknowledged the need to protect airplanes, but they found no reason that justify the high cost of airport security. “Although there may be special reasons to protect airplanes, however it is not all clear that there are any special reasons to protect airports.”
The paper claims that compared with many other places of congregation, people are more dispersed in airports, therefore a terrorist attack is likely to kill far fewer people than if a crowded sports stadium was targeted.
The paper used the cost and risk reduction figures for Los Angeles International Airport, but the research was conducted before the shooting at the airport last fall, which resulted in the death of TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez and several others wounded.
— Read more in Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, “Cost-benefit analysis of airport security: Are airports too safe?” Journal of Air Transport Management 35 (March 2014): 19-28
