A sequential stochastic passenger screening problem for aviation security

Laura McLay, Sheldon Jacobson and Alexander Nikolaev

IISE Transactions, 2009, vol. 41, issue 6, 575-591

Abstract: Designing effective aviation security systems has become a problem of national concern. Since September 11th, 2001 passenger screening systems have become an important component in the design and operation of aviation security systems. This paper introduces the Sequential Stochastic Passenger Screening Problem (SSPSP), which allows passengers to be optimally assigned (in real-time) to aviation security resources. Passengers are classified as either selectees or non-selectees, with screening procedures in place for each such class. Passengers arrive sequentially, and a prescreening system determines each passenger's perceived risk level, which becomes known upon check-in. The objective of SSPSP is to use the passengers' perceived risk levels to determine the optimal policy for screening passengers that maximizes the expected number of true alarms, subject to capacity and assignment constraints. SSPSP is formulated as a Markov decision process, and an optimal policy is found using dynamic programming. Several structural properties of SSPSP are derived using its relationship to knapsack and sequential assignment problems. An illustrative example is provided, which indicates that a large proportion of high-risk passengers are classified as selectees.[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of IIE Transactions for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix]

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07408170802510416 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uiiexx:v:41:y:2009:i:6:p:575-591

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/07408170802510416

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().