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

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The contribution of the paper is very relevant and timely. Indeed, a robust framework is crucial to manage the intrusion issue in particular to airport safety. Complementing the framework with the case study makes the paper stronger in value.

I would like to request for few clarification on the proposed methodological framework for the risk assessment as shown in Figure 1. 

1. The activity - 'Airport Vulnerability Assessment' is pointing to the outcome of threat likelihood and mitigation. How do you derive the mitigation from on vulnerability assessment? I suppose the outcome of this activity should be the AV index/risk level of a particular airport and threat likelihood. In order to derive a mitigation, we will need to identify the hazard/threat first. Please re-look into this.

2. I agree with this, AVI=?(?drone(⋅),?drone(⋅)), the AVI/Risk Level should be the product of the drone-intrusion likelihood and the drone-intrusion mitigation. However, Authors need to include in the framework, how the mitigations are derived.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

A brief summary 

I see the primary goal of the article as the authors' efforts to expand knowledge and support solutions for proposing a methodological framework for the risk assessment of drone intrusions in airports, tailored to drone intrusion features, airport features, and current operations, and considering both safety-related and security-related causes.

The main contribution and strength of the article are that it uses an experimental database of data from Milan Malpensa Airport for verification. The framework is based on a combination of model-based and data-driven approaches The authors share knowledge from the analysis for the benefit of educating the aviation community about the issue.

General concept comments

The manuscript is clear, relevant to the field of the journal, and presented in a well-structured manner. The literature search on the issue is adequate.

The authors developed a relevant methodology for solving the problem.

The paper has its limits, as a case study for a selected airport. The conclusions are clearly formulated, in accordance with the presented evidence and arguments of the authors. We can consider that the focus of the article can bring a new understanding of anti-drone protection for airport management using the developed methodological framework. The selected knowledge can be appropriately extracted for the airport environment of another country/region.

The paper has the potential to generate further research questions for continued scientific work. 

Specific comments 

I have no significant comments.

Overall Recommendation

I have no significant comments. I recommend the paper for publication within the academic and research discussion on the topic. Accept in present form.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our work. We highly appreciate your positive feedback.

Best regards,

Domenico Pascarella (On behalf of all the authors)