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Article Excerpt
The United States Commercial Aviation Partnership (USCAP), a group of government and industry stakeholders, combined several operations research methods in an analytical process and model that encompasses the US commercial aviation industry, including travelers, airlines, airports, airline and airport suppliers, government agencies, and travel and tourism entities. With input from these stakeholders, the model, combining system dynamics and econometrics, evaluates the effects of proposed security measures over 25 years. It enables all stakeholders to share a common understanding of these effects and helps government decision makers to improve security without undue and unforeseen operational and economic impact. The model uses linear and nonlinear programming, single and multivariate regression, system dynamics, econometrics, and Monte Carlo simulation. Since 2004, the government has considered the model results in determining policies for screening and credentialing airport employees, screening passengers and cargo, determining security staffing levels, and charging security fees. All participating stakeholders reviewed each analysis for acceptability. Based on the model's success, they envision extending its use to include nonsecurity policy issues.
September 11, 2001, the day commercial airplanes became weapons of mass destruction, is personal to many of us and has changed our perspectives on our lives and our world. The official death toll in the attacks was 2,986, including the airline passengers and airline crew members, workers and visitors in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the police and firefighters, and the 19 hijackers. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halted all flight operations at the nation's airports for the first time in US history and swiftly grounded the approximately 5,000 commercial aircraft that were in flight. Only military aircraft were flying over the US for the rest of that and the next few days. The events of that day left the airline industry and its supporting companies financially devastated.
Key words: transportation: safety; government: regulations.
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The Economic Impact
According to the General Accounting Office's (GAO's) "Review of studies of the economic impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center" (2002), the Milken Institute estimated the losses from the terrorist attack as $191 billion for all 315 US metropolitan areas. The New York State Senate's finance committee estimated that terrorism caused losses of $639 billion to the US through 2003. The New York State Assembly's ways and means committee estimated that the September 11 attack caused about 40 percent of the slowdown in the 2001 gross domestic product (GDP).
Congress created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, with the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) of November 19, 2001 and made it part of the Department of Transportation. In March 2003, the TSA moved to the newly created Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and was given responsibility for national transportation security with a focus on the US commercial aviation system security initiatives as mandated by both the White House and Congress.
The new procedures, processes, laws, and regulations provided additional safeguards against terrorism. Air travelers suffered the unintended consequences of these safeguards as the queues in front of the security checkpoints grew from a few feet to hundreds of yards and the wait time from minutes to hours. Even so, some thought the security provisions were inadequate, while others thought they were too onerous for the commercial aviation industry.
Government and industry leaders recognized these conflicts and problems. They had no viable, simple fixes. They recognized that understanding the impact of mandatory security policies for commercial aviation was an essential component of the public policy debate. In early 2003, they formed the United States Commercial Aviation Partnership (USCAP).
In their initial meetings, the stakeholders agreed to focus on maintaining the vitality of the US commercial aviation industry while ensuring that the federal security requirements were implemented effectively and efficiently. They defined vitality as safe, secure, and efficient and implied a balance among the three. They realized that the most valuable product of modeling would be the creation of an environment that would foster industry-government dialogue, rather than an analytical answer.
The stakeholder leaders believed in the benefits of collaboration and the abilities of their technical professionals. Operations research, engineering, scientific, and economic professionals from Boeing, TSA, and the industry stakeholder organizations developed models for the technical working group. This group used the models to analyze, define, and predict the operational and economic effects of air travel security options for both passengers and cargo. Using a 25-year horizon, the models analyze the operational and economic relationships of key elements of the US commercial aviation system and calculate the cost and impact values of current or proposed TSA security policies and protocols for the TSA and for airlines, airports, airport retailers, parking providers, hotels, and other associated services. The USCAP leaders used these results in developing assessments of proposed aviation security policies.
In its report, the 9/11 Commission stated, "Hard choices must be made in allocating limited resources" (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States 2004, p. 395) as the US confronts the threat of terrorism, in that the economy and the country cannot be completely protected against terrorism. The government must decide where to expend the limited resources for security to gain the maximum security.
USCAP is a process that supports its activities with analytical tools. Ron Robinson of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Rich Hansen of the TSA led the effort to develop the process and get it accepted by government and industry stakeholders. Many industry experts worked on developing the USCAP model. The model's chief architect, Bob Peterson, has 35 years experience in commercial aviation marketing. He applied his extensive industry knowledge and modeling skills in developing the model structure, defined much of the programming structure, and led the model development activity which drew on the expertise of subject matter experts (SMEs) from the stakeholders. Bill Lee, currently with WHL Consulting and formerly with Boeing Commercial Airplanes, has over 30 years of industry forecasting and marketing experience. He was the lead programmer and data modeler. Ray Bittel of Boeing focused on evaluating the costing, staffing, and productivity capability of aviation security equipment. Chris Forgie of Boeing provided detailed modeling and computing expertise.
The TSA's Bruce McDaniel, Greg Moxness, and John Nestor provided modeling expertise, data knowledge, and government perspective during the tool's development and ongoing guidance and coordination of TSA's perspective in accessing proposed aviation security actions. The team also relied on the active participation of the Airports Council International, the Air Transport Association, and the Department of Transportation.
Tool Set Architecture
Recognizing USCAP's ongoing need for analytical flexibility, we focused on designing an adaptable system that would satisfy the following requirements:
--It had to compare alternative policies or security protocols.
--It had to identify the effects of security policies or protocols.
--It had to include all the entities in the US commercial aviation industry.
--It had to respond quickly to what-if questions.
--It had to be extendible to meet new, currently unforeseen security proposals.
--It required a lean analysis team because some of the stakeholders...
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