Risk assessment of maritime supply chain security in ports and waterways

Seaports and waterways are crucial for international trade, and damage to them may cost millions to the global economy. In the past, Malaysia has been threatened and attacked by terrorists, and pirates have hijacked ships near the coasts of the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. Such acts can negatively affect the country's maritime supply chain. This paper analyses the risk to Malaysia's maritime supply chain security in ports and waterways by applying a risk assessment matrix. The findings show that Malaysian ports are vulnerable to attacks and crime due to various factors. Also, Malaysia's waterways may always be at risk given the country's geographical location and status as one of the most important trade routes in the world. Mitigating the risk to ports and waterways can be accomplished by investing in more advanced security equipment, eliminating corruption, and increasing the military presence in the Strait of Malacca. This study may be able to help to increase ports' policy-makers' preparation and decision-making

Overcoming Human Trafficking via Operations Research and Analytics: Opportunities for Methods, Models, and Applications

Human trafficking is a transnational complex societal and economic issue. While human trafficking has been studied in a variety of contexts, including criminology, sociological, and clinical domains, to date there has been very little coverage in the operations research (OR) and analytics community. This paper highlights how operations research and analytics techniques can be used to address the growing issue of human trafficking. It is intended to give insight to operations research and analytics professionals into the unique concerns, problems, and challenges in human trafficking; the relevance of OR and analytics to key pillars of human trafficking including prevention, protection, and prosecution; and to discuss opportunities for OR and analytics to make a difference in the human trafficking domain. We maintain that a profound need exists to explore how operations research and analytics can be effectively leveraged to combat human trafficking, and set forth this call to action to inhibit its pervasiveness

Prevention of terrorism : an assessment of prior POM work and future potentials

© 2020 Production and Operations Management Society In this study, we review POM-based research related to prevention of terrorism. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) terrorist attacks have the potential to be prevented. Consequently, the focus of this study is on security enhancement and improving the resiliency of a nation to prevent terrorist attacks. Accordingly, we review articles from the 25 top journals, [following procedures developed by Gupta et al. (2016)], in the fields of Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, Management Science, and Supply Chain Management. In addition, we searched some selected journals in the fields of Information Sciences, Political Science, and Economics. This literature is organized and reviewed under the following seven core capabilities defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): (1) Intelligence and Information Sharing, (2) Planning, (3) Interdiction and Disruption, (4) Screening, Search, and Detection, (5) Forensics and Attribution, (6) Public Information and Warning, and (7) Operational Coordination. We found that POM research on terrorism is primarily driven by the type of information that a defending country and a terrorist have about each other. Game theory is the main technique that is used in most research papers. Possible directions for future research are discussed

Mitigating Crime Risks in the International Logistics Network:the Case of Swiss Post

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 raised major concerns about the vulnerability of global transportation systems to transnational crime and terrorism. Although the attacks occurred in the context of passenger transport, they spurred unprecedented academic research on supply chain security (SCS). Alas, today, more than a decade later, theoretical underpinnings of the SCS discipline remain weak. First, the extant SCS literature offers only a cursory and ambiguous view on the risks that SCS management addresses. Second, the academic research offers little evidence of how security solutions affect security and logistics performance. Due to the scarce and conflicting scientific evidence, managers and authorities are having a difficult time securing the supply chain without disrupting trade and logistics operations. This thesis comprises three research phases that seek to address the two crucial weaknesses of the current academic knowledge. The first phase intends to identify and characterize risks that the SCS management addresses and capture them under a unified theoretical frame â a taxonomy of supply chain crimes. The taxonomy results from a study of managerial descriptions of crime problems that occur or could occur in the supply chain context. The second phase aims at producing a research agenda and at isolating principles for logistics-friendly design of security systems through a synthesis of peer-reviewed academic SCS literature. The synthesis is done using the so-called systematic literature review technique, which follows a prescribed and transparent protocol devised to reduce researcher bias and increase transparency of the review process. The third research phase describes the international postal service from the perspective of Swiss Post, putting a special emphasis on postal security management and law enforcement. The later case study analysis tests validity of the supply chain crime taxonomy and aims to generate evidence-based concepts for improving the postal security management. Research findings imply that supply chain crime problems are numerous and diverse, most important being cargo theft, smuggling, and cyber crime. Despite the variety, however, the crime problems collapse into three main taxonomic classes when categorized by the way criminals interact with the supply chain: 1) by taking assets out of the supply chain, 2) by introducing unauthorized goods into the supply chain, and 3) by directly attacking the supply chain. Besides, the criminals commonly resort to a range of facilitating crimes to carry out crimes of the main taxonomic classes. The literature synthesis found that the SCS discipline has attracted cross-disciplinary and steadily growing academic interest over the past decade. The synthesis also suggested that although there are no universal optimal rules for the SCS management, there are certain design principles that should be considered when SCS management decisions are made. The case study evidence revealed that postal security management comprises multiple domains, each having distinctive goals and employing different security solutions. Except for the airmail domain, the number and stringency of existing postal security controls seem low, though proportional to the current terrorist and crime threats. Application of the design principles into the case study context identified a set of promising concepts for improving the postal security management. [...