EU-Funded BEMOSA Project Study Suggests A Need To Improve Security Decision-Making Processes

The first in-depth study of European airports, conducted by the EU-funded BEMOSA Consortium, indicates that airport personnel do not rely primarily on procedures or rules in emergency cases.  The report contains the first results of an extensive study aimed at obtaining data on how emergencies and security threats are actually handled in airports. The results will be presented on a special workshop on applying human factors to airport security that will be hosted by BEMOSA in Belgium on May 25, 2011.

BEMOSA's experts concluded that there appeared to be a definite need to improve security decision-making procedures. This was reflected in the clearly observed problems of recognizing a threat and acting upon it. The report indicates that there appears to be a gap between procedures and actual behaviour when a threat is recognized and especially when it is acted upon.

The study found that:

• Only 53.1 percent of airport employees and 63% of security workers said they put complete trust in security technologies.
• Only 23.6% of airport employees and 58% of security workers said that when they saw something suspicious they alerted others.
• 54.3% of the workers and 40% of security personal never raised the alarm or called a security code.

The study aims to describe real behaviour patterns in order to develop airport staff training programs for improving crisis handling and hazard reduction.

"There appears to be a gap between procedures and actual behaviour when a threat is recognized and especially when acted upon. It seems, that in such cases informal group behaviour is as important as formal procedures," said Prof. Alan Kirschenbaum from the Technion in Israel, a world expert in disaster management and initiator and coordinator of BEMOSA. "Cases in which procedures are not followed should not necessarily be viewed as a negative phenomenon."

Kirschenbaum added that highly motivated security personnel show initiative and creativity in handling situations when procedures are not sufficient or relevant. He noted, however, that not following procedures was usually a result of lack of skills or training.

FMI: http://bemosa.technion.ac.il