Paper Info
Title
Multilevel, threshold-based policies for cargo container security screening systems.
Abstract
To mitigate the threat of nuclear terrorism within the US using nuclear material that has been smuggled into the country, the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has expanded its cargo container detection capabilities at ports of entry into the US This paper formulates a risk-based screening framework for determining how to define a primary screening alarm for screening cargo containers given a set of dependent primary screening devices. To do so, this paper proposes two linear programming models for screening cargo containers for nuclear material at port security stations using knapsack problem models. All cargo containers undergo primary screening, where they are screened by a given number of security devices. The objective is to identifying the primary security outcomes that warrant a system alarm for each container risk group such that the system detection probability is maximized, subject to a screening budget. The base model is compared to a second model that explicitly requires a threshold-based policy. The structural properties of the two models are compared, which indicates that all risk groups except at most one have deterministic screening policies. A computational example suggests that the detection probability is not significantly altered by enforcing a threshold policy. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1016/j.ejor.2012.01.060
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
Knapsack problem models,Container screening,Homeland Security,Threshold constraints
Homeland security,Port (computer networking),Warrant,Computer security,Nuclear terrorism,Nuclear material,Linear programming,Knapsack problem,Port security,Mathematics,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
220
2
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
8
0.60
9
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Laura A. Mclay119215.16
Rebecca A. Dreiding2131.15