Creating and Maintaining a Secure and Safe Environment on a Challenged Civilian University Campus in Papua New Guinea

The article introduces the challenges of maintaining effective security (of both personnel and property) on a 220 hectare rural/suburban University campus, The Papua New Guinea University of Technology, located on the outskirts of Lae, the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea, serves as its main port and manufacturing hub. Since the Independence of Papua New Guinea in 1975, the city of Lae, the University (of approximately 3000 students, and 1500 academic, technical, and administrative and staff) and its surrounding communities have faced increasing pressing security issues, some caused by internal (on campus) and others by external (off campus) factors. After a long, politically motivated student boycott in 2016 (which ended up with destruction of varied University properties and the death of a student), the University has endeavoured to create a safe campus environment by employing quantitative modelling predictive techniques, cost-effective technologies and appropriate social-psychological insights aimed at transcending extant tribal mindsets (the country is noted for having over 800 tribes and languages across its widely space geography of 462,840 Km and approximately 7 million population). Tribal conflict is a constant concern for the police and governing authorities, an inhibitor of balanced social and economic development of the resource-rich country.