  The efficiency of current cargo screening processes at sea and air ports is
unknown as no benchmarks exists against which they could be measured. Some
manufacturer benchmarks exist for individual sensors but we have not found any
benchmarks that take a holistic view of the screening procedures assessing a
combination of sensors and also taking operator variability into account. Just
adding up resources and manpower used is not an effective way for assessing
systems where human decision-making and operator compliance to rules play a
vital role. For such systems more advanced assessment methods need to be used,
taking into account that the cargo screening process is of a dynamic and
stochastic nature. Our project aim is to develop a decision support tool
(cargo-screening system simulator) that will map the right technology and
manpower to the right commodity-threat combination in order to maximize
detection rates. In this paper we present a project outline and highlight the
research challenges we have identified so far. In addition we introduce our
first case study, where we investigate the cargo screening process at the ferry
port in Calais.
