ABSTRACT

Measuring the performance of Security Officers (SOs) on airport checkpoint tasks other than X-ray screening of carry-on items has traditionally meant using Covert Test trials to probe the security of the overall aviation security system. Covert Test is expensive and difficult to schedule on a regular basis, for example to provide performance feedback to individual SO or to aggregate into overall performance metrics for a checkpoint or an airport. For X-ray screening the Threat Image Projection System (TIPS) data collection system can provide such measures and it is at least face-valid. The challenge of this project was to produce a cost-effective system with characteristics similar to TIPS for evaluating the non-X-ray tasks at checkpoints. There have been proposals in a number of countries for “key performance indicators”, but no validated system has been developed. Stolzer et al (2008) showed a system for aviation safety. The basis for the system developed here was a detailed analysis of the tasks involved to determine where the opportunities for error existed, followed by developing an observation tool that concentrated observers onto these error opportunities.