  Biosecurity risk material (BRM) presents a clear and significant threat to
national and international environmental and economic assets. Intercepting BRM
carried by non-compliant international passengers is a key priority of border
biosecurity services. Global travel rates are constantly increasing, which
complicates this important responsibility, and necessitates judicious
intervention. Selection of passengers for intervention is generally performed
manually, and the quality of the selection depends on the experience and
judgement of the officer making the selection. In this article we report on a
case study to assess the predictive ability of statistical profiling methods
that predict non-compliance with biosecurity regulations using data obtained
from regulatory documents as inputs. We then evaluate the performance arising
from using risk predictions to select higher risk passengers for screening. We
find that both prediction performance and screening higher risk passengers from
regulatory documents are superior to manual and random screening, and recommend
that authorities further investigate statistical profiling for efficient
intervention of biosecurity risk material on incoming passengers.
