Security checkpoint optimizer (SCO): An application for simulating the operations of airport security checkpoints

For most security planners, a key challenge is to continuously evaluate how changes or additions to their facilities or procedures impact security effectiveness, operational costs, and passenger throughput. Each change must be analyzed to ensure negative effects do not outweigh the benefits. This paper presents Security Checkpoint Optimizer (SCO), a 2-D spatially aware discrete event simulation tool developed by Northrop Grumman for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. SCO is designed to allow security analysts to graphically build a simulation model and layout a series of screening activities to take place. Once the model is defined, SCO simulates passenger movement using both path-based and pathless movement algorithms to mimic a semi-autonomous passenger traversal of a 2-D space. The software is designed to allow analysts to perform multiple "what-if" analyses to balance benefits and tradeoffs.