Analysis and mitigation of cargo theft risk

Research Project, 2016 – 2017

This research project focuses on one of the most factual supply chain risks, namely, cargo theft. We focus on this issue because cargo theft is really a substantial problem in an international perspective. For example, annual cargo theft losses in the EU are estimated at EUR 8.2 billion (EP, 2007). Most of the freight transport in the EU is by road, so road cargo theft can be considered as a threat to one of the EU’s core principles, the free movement of goods (Europol, 2009). For several reasons, it is difficult to assign values on the risks related to cargo theft. The fact that the expected loss, from a statistical perspective, can be calculated as the probability of a theft multiplied by the value of the lost goods if the theft actually occurs (Manuj & Mentzer, 2008) shows that the concept of risk is a complex issue in this field. In several recent studies (Ekwall and Lantz, 2015, 2013, 2012), we have analysed seasonality patterns of cargo theft, based on actual aggregated crime statistics from TAPA/EMEA (a database with almost 20 000 cargo theft incident during the last decade), in order to provide a better descriptive understanding of this risk in an overall European perspective.

The purpose of this project is to explore and compare actual and perceived cargo theft risks in Sweden and Finland and in the EU as a whole in order to outline managerial strategies that can reduce the risk of cargo theft.