A Review of Airport Security and Resilience Analysis: Integration of Risk Modelling Frameworks

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Authors: Lintong Li, Yunhao Li, Washington Yotto Ochieng, William Graham Proud, Mingyang Huang, Mireille El Hajj, Arnab Majumdar
Cited by: 1
References: 106

Abstract

Airports, as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), operate as tightly coupled socio-technical systems exposed to multifaceted threats, including cyber, physical, social, environmental, and Chemical, Biological and Radiological (CBR) threats. This study presents a structured review of the synthesis of conceptual frameworks, airport structural configurations, sensor networks, and multi-domain threat landscapes, as well as airport security and resilience analysis, while comparatively examining risk assessment approaches. The review shows that existing approaches are effective for threat identification and prioritisation but remain predominantly static, with limitations in scalability, data dependency, and real-time applicability. To address these limitations, Threat-Vulnerability-Risk Assessment (TVRA) is adopted as a structured, reusable approach to support metric allocation, redundancy design, and emergency capability development. It further serves as a bridge between traditional risk assessment and resilience-oriented system design by enabling the transformation of static risk scores into scenario-based inputs, thereby supporting stress-testing and lifecycle-based resilience planning across the prepare, act, and recover phases. However, its inherently static structure limits its ability to capture temporal dynamics and cascading interdependencies, highlighting the need to integrate it with dynamic modelling approaches.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis Air Traffic Management and Optimization Aviation Industry Analysis and Trends

Publication details

Journal / source
Applied Sciences
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
16
Issue
11
Pages
5406–5406
Publication date
28 May 2026
Language
EN