Determining and prioritizing man-made threats in critical infrastructures: Case study – civilian airports

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine and prioritize man-made threats that have the probability of occurring in civilian airports, as an important part of critical infrastructures in each country.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is practical-developmental in terms of research type and its approach is descriptive. Desktop research methods and interviews (qualitative) have been used in identifying deliberate man-made threats that are faced by the civilian airports. Moreover, a questionnaire (quantitative) has been utilized to assess the civilian airports’ assets that are targets likely to be threatened and assess threats by determining and prioritizing.FindingsThe results of the paper show that the main threat faced by civilian airports is “Air and missile strikes.” An additional 15 threats endangering civilian airports that have been extracted and presented through integrating specialized literature were prioritized in the main components of civilian airports. This prioritization has been performed on the basis of the following five indicators: “Damage Severity,” “Threat Precedent,” “Target Attractiveness,” “Negative Consequences for the Enemy” and “Enemy Ability.”Originality/valueThis paper is extracted from master’s thesis that identifies and assesses the threats to civil airport, and prioritizes them, and the results were confirmed by the experts.