Interpretive Structural Modelling of Security System for Better Security Management in Railways

The inherent reason lying at the core of the issue of designing effective security policy in railways is its complexity, leading to a poorly articulated structure of security system. While there have been attempts to study the complex nature of security issues, scientific research in this direction has left much to be desired. A systems approach can provide the required solution to the existing problem. In this paper, the authors have discussed the application of Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) to security system in Indian Railways. ISM is a soft systems methodology, based on paired comparison of structural elements with respect to a given relationship, to structure complex systems. The results presented in the paper are based on research work that involved security experts drawn from the railways along with other stakeholders as domain experts, but do not reflect any official version of Indian Railways.