Innovation in ports security through cooperation projects

Nowadays, terrorism is the main threat (technological or biological) that society is facing due to its capacity of producing human and material damages and its difficulty of prediction. Terrorist groups can use sophisticated methods which involve explosives, biological and radioactive agents, and also new threats involving “digital” attacks. Ports represent significant challenges when implementing new security measures. They cover large geographical areas, they have very complex operations, they service large numbers of passengers and they process large volumes of goods. Maintaining high efficiency in the transportation of goods and passengers is vital to a port. As well as efficient surveillance and access control, this requires efficient organizational and technological interfaces, linking ports to border control authorities, the police, other intervention forces, and transport and logistics operators. Research and Innovation have also shown that the complexity and cost of port operations for intra-European freight is one of the major obstacles for shifting more freight from roads onto sea. The introduction of new security measures can easily make this situation worse and it is important to start to look at how one can improve security while, hopefully, reducing operational complexity and cost in European ports. In order to achieve that, new approaches on risk assessment are being considered through FP7 research cooperation projects such as SUPPORT or CONTAIN.