Modeling the impact of security and disaster response on cargo operations

While significant effort has been expended on the analysis of new security technologies and policies at ports of entry, the effort has focused on the effectiveness of the security, not on the impact of security on commercial operations. This paper addresses the requirements to model the impact of security measures on port operations, using an existing port simulation. The goal of the simulation is to assess different strategies from an economic viewpoint. To contrast different strategies, we need to be able to rapidly prototype the strategies in an existing operational model. Both proactive and reactive security measures are addressed, as well as responses to natural disasters. The modeling techniques required to rapidly incorporate new security strategies into the simulation are identified. Then these capabilities are demonstrated using the Port Simulation (PORTSIM) tool.