Airport narcotics detection is a transportation security challenge in which rapid screening technologies must detect concealed analytes in heterogeneous samples while accounting for adaptive trafficking strategies. Consequently, aviation security checkpoints present a particularly challenging analytical problem: non-chemist operators must achieve high analytical selectivity within seconds while analyzing unknown matrices in the presence of concealment barriers and interferents. Many existing reviews focus primarily on instrumentation, comparing detection modalities in isolation. This critical review examined the literature on ion mobility spectrometry, ambient mass spectrometry, Raman spectroscopy, portable GC-MS, and canine olfaction to identify factors contributing to differences between field and laboratory detection performance. A structured literature search and framework synthesis of Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed (2010–2026) identified 35 relevant studies, which were assessed for methodological quality using predefined criteria. Three interdependent axes affecting checkpoint detection were synthesized and formalized as the Airport Narcotics Detection Triad (ANDT): concealment chemistry (analyte partitioning across engineered barriers), environmental matrix effects (endogenous and adversarial interferents), and transit degradation (temperature-, humidity-, and light-driven transformations). Each principal detection platform was mapped according to its analytical compatibility across the triad. A Cross-Platform Orthogonal Validation (CPOV) framework was proposed, adapting SWGDRUG orthogonality principles to the near-real-time checkpoint context through a three-tier evidence-informed framework. The ANDT-CPOV framework provides analytical chemists, aviation security practitioners, and policymakers with a structured basis for method selection, sensor fusion architecture, and future checkpoint design.
The maritime industry faces unprecedented cybersecurity challenges as seaports increasingly adopt artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and cyber-physical systems. This project mitigates a substantial research gap, considering the confidentiality restrictions preventing the data analysis based on real case studies. Furthermore, it showcases the evolution of maritime cybersecurity threats through a comprehensive case study analysis. The work focuses on the critical 27-second cyber breakout threshold that represents the fastest recorded lateral network movement. Through examination of five detailed case scenarios and analysis of emerging cyberthreats, this study provides maritime security professionals with practical insights into vulnerability patterns and threat vectors. This project reveals how modern interconnected port technologies create cascade vulnerabilities with the potential to propagate across global supply chains within seconds. The findings reveal that traditional maritime security approaches cannot adequately address the speed and complexity of modern cyber threats. This necessitates new frameworks for understanding and mitigating maritime cybersecurity risks.
The uninterrupted movement of merchant shipping is a precondition of the global economy, yet commercial vessels increasingly operate near geopolitical rivalry, regional war, gray-zone coercion, and even episodic armed conflict. Merchant vessels may now face anti-ship missiles, naval mines, torpedoes, unmanned vehicles (UXVs), including aerial, surface, and underwater systems, cyber-electromagnetic disruption, misidentification during military engagements, and radiological hazards. This article examines merchant-vessel operations in conflict-adjacent waters as a transportation-security problem and distinguishes vulnerability, defined as susceptibility to harm, from survivability, defined as the capacity to avoid, withstand, respond to, and recover from a harmful event while protecting life and maintaining essential functions. Using a structured integrative review of peer-reviewed research, legal and regulatory materials, and authoritative maritime guidance, the article synthesizes maritime security, transportation security, transport system resilience, operational risk, situation-awareness, and naturalistic decision-making research. It proposes that exposure is an antecedent of vulnerability, while threat awareness and decision quality shape the timing and appropriateness of protective action. Survivability additionally depends on preparedness, damage-control capability, redundancy, and recovery support. The analysis situates these mechanisms within the SOLAS, ISM, ISPS, and STCW architecture and current shipboard and shore-side responsibilities. It concludes that merchant-vessel survivability depends less on tactical improvisation after an attack begins than on dynamic pre-transit assessment, threat-informed routing, disciplined coordination, and timely decisions to delay, divert, or withdraw before a vessel becomes trapped within another actor’s engagement zone.
Unruly passenger incidents are a persistent concern for aviation security, yet event-level data for Europe are largely inaccessible because the official reporting system is confidential by design and national authorities publish aggregates that are not comparable with one another. This study examines what can be established from public sources about such incidents on low-cost flights to Spain, the largest leisure market in Europe, between 2020 and 2025. Cases were identified through a multilingual open-source search conducted in five predefined rounds with a saturation-based stopping rule, yielding 69 events coded across 18 variables and assigned to one of two documentary verification tiers. A second coder classified all events independently; agreement was substantial for diversion, behaviour category and physical aggression, and weaker for severity, which is therefore reported descriptively. Events concentrated on routes from the United Kingdom to Spanish island airports, 46.4
