Cost-Benefit Analysis of Advanced Imaging Technology Full Body Scanners for Airline Passenger Security Screening

Abstract

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been deploying Advanced Imaging Technologies (AITs) that are full-body scanners to inspect a passenger's body for concealed weapons, explosives, and other prohibited items. The terrorist threat that AITs are primarily dedicated to is preventing the downing of a commercial airliner by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) smuggled on board by a passenger. The cost of this technology will reach $1.2 billion per year by 2014. The paper develops a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of AITs for passenger screening at U.S. airports. The analysis considered threat probability, risk reduction, losses, and costs of security measures in the estimation of costs and benefits. Since there is uncertainty and variability of these parameters, three alternate probability (uncertainty) models were used to characterise risk reduction and losses. Economic losses were assumed to vary from $2-$50 billion, and risk reduction from 5-10 percent. Monte-Carlo simulation methods were used to propagate these uncertainties in the calculation of benefits, and the minimum attack probability necessary for full body scanners to be cost-effective were calculated. It was found that, based on mean results, more than one attack every two years would need to originate from U.S. airports for AITs to pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, the attack probability needs to exceed 160-330 percent per year to be 90 percent certain that full body scanners are cost-effective.

Evaluating Counterterrorism Spending

“…For example, whatever one's conclusion about the benefit-cost ratio of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts, they are certainly superior to some other security measures. For example, the Transport Security Administration's Federal Air Marshal Service and its full body scanner technology together are nearly as costly as the entire FBI counterterrorism budget, but their risk reduction over the alternatives appears to be negligible Stewart and Mueller 2011, 2013a, 2013b. Moreover, the body scanner technology only deals with specific threats associated with hijacking and body-borne bombs on aircraft.…”

Optimization of Air Traffic Control Training at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy

“…To better compare these five improvement areas, a break-even, cost-benefit analysis was conducted by the research team, similarly to those analyses conducted in [23,24]. A break-even analysis that finds the minimum amount of benefits needed to outweigh the costs for a particular improvement area was deemed practical for this application, as costs associated with simulation technologies vary vastly between different vendors, technology types, and technology maturity, and it is therefore difficult to quantify costs via monetary values.…”

Minimizing thermal degradation in gas chromatographic quantitation of pentaerythritol tetranitrate

“…Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) is a military explosive commonly used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and detection of this material has become increasingly important over the last 15 years for transportation security and safety [1,2]. PETN can be difficult to detect due to its low vapor pressure and thermal lability [3].…”