Dr. Erman Coskun

1
Airport Security Complexity Problems with the
Information System Components

• Dr. Erman Coskun
• Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods and
  Information Systems
• Economics and Administrative Sciences Faculty
• Business Administration Department
• Sakarya University TURKEY
• Information Systems Department
• Le Moyne College Syracuse, NY USA
• 
  

2
Presentation Plan

• Airports as Safety-critical Large-scale Systems
• Research Objectives
• Airport Security Before and After 9/11
• Problems With Airport Security
• IS and Airport Security
• IS Systems Development for Airport Security
• Conclusions and Contributions of Research
• Future Research

3
Airports as Safety-critical Large-scale Systems

• Airports are Safety-critical Large-scale Systems
• Many components and subsystems
• Complex
• Humans-machines-computers-technology
• Timely and high quality decisions are vital
• System or component failure is costly
• Loss of human-life, injuries
• Economic loss

4
9/11 and Airport Security

• Airports before and after 9/11
• Before Cutting costs first then security
  (airline industry)
• After Security first
• Homeland security, Federal Aviation Adm. ,
  New Technology
• National Guard, Presidential Directives
• Causes of 9/11
• Coordination, coordination, coordination
• Technology Integration, sharing
  information,
• high cost of
  new technology,
• inadequate
  technology
• (Aviation
  Safety Reporting System)
• Human Operators Education, training,
• high turnover
  rate,
• low salaries

5
Figure 1. Airport Wages for US and Other Countries

• Source U.S. General Accounting Office, Air
  Security International, CNN research
• Taken from on March 1 2005 http//www.cnn.com/SPE
  CIALS/2001/trade.center/flight.risk/airport.wages.
  html

6
Figure 2. Airport Turnover (CNN 2000)
7
Airport Security

• Relevant, diverse, and complex issue
• Tightly coupled
• Data and information is very important
• Integration among subsystems, with outside
  systems, humans, technology, departments is
  extremely important

8
Problematic Areas With Aiports

• Communication and coordination among subsystems,
  people, and agencies
• People
• Inadequate Hardware and Software (COST)
• Legacy and unintelligent databases
• COST

9
AIRPORT EMERGENCY RESPONSE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

• Hardware Technology
• Satellite Imagery, Scannners, Biometrics,
  Facial Recognition
• Software
• Safety-critical software development
• Intelligent, fast, accurate DSS
• AI, Neural Networks, Data mining,
• People
• Selection, training, salaries, benefits, job
  satisfaction

10
COMPLEXITY

• Results of Complexity
• Unpredictability (Y2K)
• Higher Failure Risk
• Limited Human Cognitive Abilities
• Since we can not eliminate complexity
• totally, we must make sure that the level of
• complexity is controllable and adequate

11
COMPLEXITY COMPONENTS
CODE STRUCTURE
INTELLIGENCE
SW
TIMELY, ACCURATE HIGH QUALITY DECISIONS
USER INTERFACE
DB
HW
INTELLIGENCE
NW
ERGONOMICS
COGNITIVE THINKING
HUMAN
SYSTEM
12
IS for Airport Security
13
Conclusions

• Airports are complex SCLSS
• They are vital for any country and for any
  economy
• We must utilize IS to make them safer
• 1- Better, faster, more functional hardware
• 2- Faster and accurate intelligent software
• 3- Integrated and intelligent databases
• 4- Highly educated and trained, well paid
• employees to use HW, SW and databases
• 5- Coordination and communication among these
  
• entities and with outside resources and
  agencies

14
Further Research Topics

• Compare findings from this study and EU or Asian
  Airport Systems
• Include social aspects such as discrimination,
  inconvenience, fear, suspicion
• Try to control or decrease level of complexity
• Focus on better integration and communication

15
QUESTIONS?DISCUSSION POINTS?