Mitigation of Operational Impacts on Airports by Early Awareness of Malicious Events Impacting Linked Critical Infrastructures

Abstract

This paper introduces to security management that is conducted at infrastructure installations and their corresponding technical assets. Malicious activities at those infrastructures lead to a loss of service provision or can even introduce cascading effects towards other connected infrastructures. If an infrastructure satisfies a significant societal need, it is considered a critical infrastructure. The cascading effects can cause secondary effects at the connected infrastructures, such as airports. Airport operations are central to long-distance societal mobility and even small disruptions have knock-on effects throughout the air transport network. The cascading effects that can affect the airport and that originate at linked infrastructures and real-time use of the corresponding information for airport management and collaborative decision-making purposes in an Airport Operations Center are not well known. In what operational way can an Airport Operations Center make use of early awareness of and information about attacks on linked critical infrastructures? In how far do attacks on separate, but interconnected critical infrastructures have an effect on the operations of an airport? By looking at the existing state of the art and ongoing projects in infrastructure security research, disaster and airport management, this paper conducts a gap identification. The identified weaknesses and limitations are already partially addressed by current research projects. What is still unknown is the necessary airport-centric security management view in order to answer the research question. As a consequence, this paper proposes ideas for future necessary airport-centric infrastructure security research.