A Methodological Framework for the Risk Assessment of Drone Intrusions in Airports

Abstract

Drone expansion needs to be considered as a menace in cases of negligent, illicit, or non-cooperative use. In the case of airports, a complete protection against drone intrusion should rely on an intrusion management system, aiming at avoiding the closure of the airport. This system requires the setting of proper risk assessment methodologies for airport operations, to explicitly consider the features of drone intrusion, possibly from a quantitative point of view. This work proposes a methodological framework for the risk assessment of drone intrusions in airports, tailored on drone-intrusion features, airport features, and current operations, and considering both safety-related and security-related causes. The framework is based on the combination of model-based and data-driven approaches in order to: (i) estimate an airport vulnerability index, to measure the susceptibility of the airport to drone intrusions, based on reference datasets; (ii) specify a set of event trees to evaluate the risks of the different threat scenarios related to drone intrusions. The proposed methodological framework is applied to a concrete case study, related to Milan Malpensa airport. The achieved results show the effectiveness of the approach and elicit further requirements for counter-drone systems in airports based on the assessed risks.

Evaluation of a Resilience-Driven Operational Concept to Manage Drone Intrusions in Airports

“…ASPRID's operational procedure relies on the definition of critical assets of the airports. In detail, a critical asset (or critical element or, simply, asset) is any airport asset that exhibits a weakness against drone intrusions, i.e., the intrusion may result in a temporary or permanent interruption of the airport's operations involving the asset [14]. Thus, critical assets are those that are susceptible to mishap risks related to drone intrusions and are identified by means of a threat analysis within the risk assessment [14], which is part of the strategic phase of the ASPRID process model, as addressed in Section 3.1.…”

“…Our previous work in [13] puts forward the basis for a systematic process of risk management within the DIMS of an airport, describing a quantitative assessment of the historical features of drone intrusions in airports. Our other work in [14] describes a unified methodological framework for the risk assessment of airport drone intrusions, combining model-based and data-driven specifications. Leveraging the risk assessment results in [13,14], this paper investigates the evaluation of the proposed resilience-driven operational concept for the DIMS, tailored on drone-intrusion features, airport features, and current operations.…”

“…Our other work in [14] describes a unified methodological framework for the risk assessment of airport drone intrusions, combining model-based and data-driven specifications. Leveraging the risk assessment results in [13,14], this paper investigates the evaluation of the proposed resilience-driven operational concept for the DIMS, tailored on drone-intrusion features, airport features, and current operations. The concept was evaluated by applying it to a concrete case study related to Milan Malpensa Airport, in line with the case study described in [14].…”

“…Leveraging the risk assessment results in [13,14], this paper investigates the evaluation of the proposed resilience-driven operational concept for the DIMS, tailored on drone-intrusion features, airport features, and current operations. The concept was evaluated by applying it to a concrete case study related to Milan Malpensa Airport, in line with the case study described in [14]. The evaluation was carried out by real-time simulations and event tree analysis (ETA), exploiting the implementation of a specific simulation platform and the assessment of resilience-oriented metrics.…”

“…The operational concept considers both safety-related (i.e., accidental) and securityrelated (i.e., malicious) intrusions. In the case of security-related intrusions, these represent deliberate attacks, which may include both drone physical intrusions and drone cyber intrusions (i.e., cyberattacks using drones as cyber weapons) [14]. However, for the purposes of the ASPRID operational concept, only physical intrusions by single drones (i.e., not in teams or swarms) are considered as a reference threat in the stated problem.…”