Analysis of screening checkpoint operations for transatlantic container transportation

In response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States government passed legislations in 2006 and 2007 that require all maritime containers heading to the United States be screened by non-intrusive inspection and radiation detection devices at the foreign ports prior to departure. This means that foreign ports and customs authorities need to invest resources in settng up and operating the screening checkpoints. The screening process may also cause traffic delay and congestion in the port. A few pilot tests conducted a foreign ports have so far confirmed several opertional and technical issues. So far, no report has been found in the public domain that investigated the extent of the impacts and experimented with an alernative solution. This research formulates three screening processes, termed risk-based approach, 100 % approach and hybrid approach, based on the practices at the Port of Hamburg, the Port of Houston and the new legislations. Discrete event simulations were performed to analyze the delays and queue lengths at the screening checkpoints and at critical stations within the checkpoints. The results have shown that screening all the containers by both radiation detection and non-intrusive inspection will create significant delay and queue length. Adding an extra lane for non-intrusive inspection helps to reduce these negative impacts. The hybrid approach, which screens a small fraction of high-risk containers by non-intrusive inspection, but all the containers by radiation detection, is an alternative that will result in even smaller delay and shorter queue length.