Modeling and analyzing the performance of aviation security systems using baggage value performance measures

Aviation security is an important concern of national interest. Baggage screening security devices and operations at airport stations throughout the United States address this concern. Determining how and where to assign (deploy) such devices can be quite challenging. Moreover, even after such systems are in place, it can be difficult to measure their effectiveness. Uncovered flight segment (UFS) and uncovered passenger segment (UPS) performance measures provide a useful framework for measuring the effectiveness of a baggage screening security device deployment to a given station. However, the optimization models associated with these measures do not consider baggage screening strategies that permit partial screening of flights. To allow for such strategies, as well as to identify baggage screening security system models where the decision to screen each individual selectee bag is made individually (rather than collectively by flight), this paper introduces performance measures in which each selectee bag is assigned an individual value. In particular, the flight segment baggage value (FSBV) assigns a value to each selectee bag based upon the proportion of the flight segment that the bag covers. The passenger segment baggage value (PSBV) assigns a value to each selectee bag based on the proportion of the passenger segments that the bag covers. For each of these measures, an associated decision problem and integer programming model are introduced. In addition, several results are presented detailing both optimization techniques for the models associated with each measure and the relationships between the baggage value measures and other baggage screening security system measures. A real-world example using actual flight data from the official airline guide is presented to illustrate an application of these models and results.