Prioritizing the Risk in Customs Supply Chain Using AHP-Based Approach: Application to the Moroccan Customs Abstract—Customs is concerned with managing the risk in various stages of the customs supply chain. effective deployment of this key objective could not only fulfill the safety requirements, but also provide a competitive advantage in the commercial world. Risk assessment in Customs context is a multi-criterion decision problem which includes both qualitative and quantitative factors. The purpose of this paper is to develop a risk prioritization model enabling a structured analysis and an effective assessment of the risk. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based methodology will be a useful tool not only to tackle the different decision criteria for prioritizing risks, but also to handle the multivariate qualitative nature of data involved in the decision-making process. A case study is presented to demonstrate the structure and organization of the model. The paper concludes by identifying the critical risks in Moroccan customs supply chain, and establishing consensual data input for a risk management strategy. Index Terms—risk, risk prioritization, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), customs supply chain, moroccan customs. I. INTRODUCTION Customs Supply Chain is widely classified as a complex system, due to not only the large number of actors (customs, businesses, companies categorized, freight forwarders, individuals,...), but also their complex structural links, and the interactions between these actors. in fact, this system is subject to various types of Risks as smuggling of drugs, weapons or commercial fraud. The Manuscript received March 5, 2015; revised August 1, 2015. economic, political and social impacts of those risks are highly detrimental to the countries, businesses and to the public. For this reason, risk management in the Customs Supply Chain context is becoming a crucial issue to ensure the sustainability, safety and performance. Risk management based approach as systematic identification and implementation of all measures necessary to limit exposure to customs risk, determines which persons, goods, and means of transport should be examined and to what extent. Therefore, it is clear that just any safety policy, implementation of risk management principles, consists of an effective risk prioritization. Accordingly, it is important to use an risk assessment approach and an effective analyze of the risk faced in customs context, thus enabling decision makers to understand the capabilities and resources that need to be deployed so as to successfully implement risk management in the Customs Supply Chain. Making such judgment, however, is never an easy task as there are many qualitative factors concerned with the Risk assessment decision-making process. In the literature, analytic hierarchy process AHP is a widely employed methodology to handle the kind of this process [1]. It used qualitative variables to establish an integrated Risk assessment model so as to effectively analyze, quantify and assess the associated risk in different stages of the Moroccan customs supply chain. A numerical analysis is included in this paper to prove the effectiveness and demonstrate how of the proposed model it works. Our proposed model is aimed to not only to support the decision-making process while developing safety strategy, but also to provide a framework helps to Journal of Traffic and Logistics Engineering Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2016 ©2016 Journal of Traffic and Logistics Engineering 47 doi: 10.18178/jtle.4.1.47-55 Lamia. Hammadi National Institute of Applied Sciences INSA, Lofims, Rouen, France, National School of Applied Sciences, Oscars, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco Email: hammadi.lamia@gmail.com, lamia.hammadi@insa-rouen.fr José Eduardo. Souza De Cursi National Institute of Applied Sciences Insa, Lofims, Rouen, France Email: eduardo.souza@insa-rouen.fr Abdellah. Ait Ouahman National School of Applied Sciences, OSCARS, Cadi Ayyad University , Marrakech, Morocco. Email: aitouahman@yahoo.fr Aomar. Ibourk Faculty of Juridical Sciences, Economic and Social, GRESS, Cadi Ayyad University , Marrakech, Morocco. Email: aomaribourk@gmail.com