Innovation, transport security and supply chains: a review

ABSTRACT

The recent decades have witnessed a progressive increase of global supply chains that have been related to most produced goods. Within this phenomenon, transport security has gained more and more importance, also because of the threats coming from organised crime and international terrorist groups. In this context, many stimuli have fostered investments on innovative technologies involving all transport modes. Some innovations are mode-specific while others are common to all of them, as in the case of cyber-security. On the basis of a thorough review of the literature, the main aim of the paper is to consider the impact of transport security innovations on supply chains, especially in terms of time and of economic costs. It emerges that momentous consequences can be generated by a security breach for all the firms and regions whose economic activities are reliant on the supply chain. The main implications of the analysis are that it is then necessary a coordination and collaboration among several private and public stakeholders, not only at the local and national level, but also at the supranational level. Moreover, the trade-off which may exist between the implementation of stricter security protocols and the impact on the speed and on the cost of supply chain activities must be taken into account.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology
• innovation
• transport security
• transport modes
• supply chains

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the case of passenger transport, a sixth item would have to be explicitly considered, i.e. who is transported. In this context, terrorist attacks aimed at politicians or civilian passengers travelling by air, train or ship, and the actions aimed at creating difficulties to specific individuals (from CEOs to highly visible VIPs) should be taken into account. The possible aims of these acts would be attracting attention, simply creating disruption, kidnapping, and so on.

2 Worthy of a comment is the fact that ion spectrometry has been developed in different ways; for a review see Mäkinen, Nousiainen, & Sillanpää (2011).