REVIEWING STUDIES ON PORT SECURITY: WHAT HAS BEEN DONE?

This paper aims to analyze and evaluate studies on port security, which is an increasing concern, and summarize them to put them in order. It was obviously seen with the 9/11 terrorist attacks that terrorists also have suicide capabilities to maritime targets. Consequently, International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Code came into force by International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2004. In this paper, port security, as one of the main subjects of ISPS Code with the ship security, is analyzed. Therefore, Dokuz Eylul University Online Library is searched with some constraints which includes “port+security” in title and all articles should have “full text” and “academic journals” status.

Searching was completed with 145 articles and 58 of them were analyzed.
Articles were categorized under such four different subtitles as “importance of security”, “economic, financial and legal dimensions of security”, “security threatening elements”, and “technological advances in security”. It can be said that studies on port security mainly focused on the ISPS Code. However, the great majority of the studies have been addressed to port security and the ISPS Code in the same manner. In order to ensure port security, it is necessary to concentrate on those studies that will centre on different aspects of port security.