Airport security: Trying to prevent the worst from occurring while protecting from its deadly consequences

摘要

Designing airport facilities and systems, from greenfield or for renovation or extension purposes, requires a perfect knowledge and understanding of airport operations, regulations and business models. It also needs to anticipate operational, technological and regulatory evolutions,to design sustainable facilities and optimise in the long run CAPEX (capital expenditures) and OPEX (operation expenditures) perspectives. Many standards apply in airport engineering, but paradoxically, one sensitive field of airport design and management has been underestimated in the pastdecades and is now under great focus since the occurrence of recent terrorist attacks, that is the building’s passive security. In fact, terrorist modus operandi became more and more resolute and aim, through powerful blast and ballistic vectors, at performing maximum devastation. Theyincidentally produce structural damage to buildings and consequently increase injury and fatality tolls in confined areas such as landside public halls. This reality, that became a permanent and complex parameter of the airport security equation, is now dealt through the ‘security bydesign’ reflections driven by civil aviation international regulators. This paper gives an overview on the subject and proposes directions for reflection when considering the passive security of buildings and ‘security optimised’ designs as a core element of airport security.