1.     Present the overall significant findings of the research to both SIG associates and persons with an interest in airport security.

2.     Present specific case studies that have a direct bearing on security decisions.

3.     Lay out the potential managerial and operational implications of the findings to enhance overall airport security.

A report of the workshop will be published in Jane’s Airport Review shortly.

A short introduction laid out the framework of the project and stressed that despite the fact that airports as complex social organizations where security decisions are driven by formal administrative sets of rules, regulations and protocols, about one-quarter of employees bend or break the rules in making their security decisions. Most have never faced a real threat and think most threats are false alarms.

This Introduction was followed by what we considered in the project as the major challenges in airport security. Are airports simply an industrial process or a service organization? Is technology a facilitator or a singular solution? These issues were raised in the context of the emphasis of BEMOSA on human factors and its impact on security decisions.

Building on this, we laid the foundation for examining airport security in the context how both employees and passengers can be viewed in what was described as "the human risk system". This allowed us to support the notion that humans – both employees and passengers – are an integral part of the overall risk system where both real and perceived risks play a crucial part in the management, design and execution of how risks are transcribed in security decisions. 

At this point, findings from the data analysis were presented which demonstrated the large extent employees were involved in the definition of risk. The first set of findings focused on the fact that nearly all security decisions were based on group and not individual decisions. We detailed these results and implications, stressing that the combined results of the ethnographic, interview and questionnaire surveys supported this clear pattern of behaviour. The immediate implications on training programs which focus on individuals were pointed out...

For the full proceedings please click below.