Terrorist and Natural Threats: The ISPS Code and Emerging Technologies

With the virtual removal of country borders and changing modes of production, maritime ports have emerged as vital components of the global supply chains. Significant potential repercussions of long term disruptions to the global supply chain operations have rendered the maritime ports an attractive terrorist target and important asset during natural disasters. Referring to the quick recovery ability of ports from natural and terrorist threats, authorities have coined the term resiliency and devised strategies and frameworks for providing increased resiliency. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of the new millennium targeting maritime assets, the IMO has introduced the ISPS Code as an appendix to the SOLAS. The ISPS Code introduces new mandatory security and risk assessment procedures to improve the security of the ports. However, this code does not include any guidelines for the implementation and assessment of its requirements leaving the stakeholders in the dark. The purpose of this thesis is the identification of emerging technologies that can help in implementing policies aimed at increasing the port resiliency against terrorist and natural threats