First-Class Upgrade

Airport video surveillance needs to improve in four areas

• By Jeff Brummet
• Jan 23, 2007

PROVIDING adequate airport security has become an ongoing debate of national importance after being plunged into a post-9/11 world. Who can forget the eerie sight of an empty sky during the immediate days following the infamous attack in the nation's history?

Any person having flown on a commercial airline could quickly identify with the innocent and condemned passengers aboard those fateful flights of horror. Perhaps more difficult is identifying with the thousands of innocent U.S. citizens who went to work that day not knowing that they'd never leave. Imagine their momentary, confused horror. While the human tragedy of that day was unthinkable, the breadth of issues surrounding airport security go far deeper than protecting airline passengers and people on the ground.

undefinedThe ability of nations around the world to protect modern air traffic and travel simply cannot be understated. Without an effective and safe airline industry, the world would quickly come to a screeching halt.

Air travel -- the ability to move both people and cargo at top speed -- is absolutely critical. It is critical to the nation's ever-growing global economy. The ability of nations around the world to protect modern air traffic and travel simply cannot be understated. Without an effective and safe airline industry, the world would quickly come to a screeching halt. There are four areas modern video surveillance technology must continue to improve upon to maintain a critical role protecting airports. Like every other discipline in the broader security industry, providers must all continue to do their jobs better.

Camera Resolution
The technology behind camera resolution must continue to evolve and improve. Surveillance is all about what can be seen. The capacity to see begins with camera resolution. Camera resolution not only aids in what the human eye can clearly see, but also what highly advanced, algorithmatic-driven software can define and/or detect. Consider the following application.

Everyone is excited about intelligent video. Companies are investing millions of research dollars into the technology. One such technology within the family of intelligent video is facial recognition software. Facial recognition software is the result of highly advanced mathematical algorithms that identify and link specific points from one image, taken at the point of surveillance, with that of another image stored as a reference point. The technology, once fully developed, has enormous benefits to law enforcement to help find missing or abducted people, locate fugitives and track movements of suspected terrorists.

With the advent of intelligent video technology, advanced camera and recording resolution capabilities become more and more critical as security professionals try to differentiate and define objects of interest. Facial recognition technology, in some respects, can only be as accurate as the detailed definition allowed by the clarity and resolution of the original image. As camera images become cleaner by way of higher resolution technology, intelligent video algorithms become more accurate and reliable. These same types of algorithms can be used to detect objects left unattended, track objects of interest, monitor directional behaviors in traffic flow and identify anomalies to acceptable standards. With higher resolution images, algorithms are more accurate.

Image Compression
While increased resolution helps, it also creates its own obstacles -- storage compression and transmission constraints. Ironically, this becomes the second critical area of improvement needed by video surveillance technology to provide airport security. As technology improves to capture more and more data (higher resolutions add exponentially to the amount of digital data contained in a file), so does the technology used to compress, store and transmit data.

It makes sense that the higher the resolution, the more raw digital data is created in the image. The more data created, the larger the file size. The files must be sent over high-speed data lines and network infrastructure so the video can be seen by all pertinent people. Where airport security applications are concerned, response time is everything. The longer it takes to transmit pertinent information to field operatives, the less secure the facility becomes.

In virtually every airport, one chief concern is the time it takes to make critical decisions such as terminal shutdowns. Even more important for those watching monetary budgets of airport operations is the elimination of unnecessary terminal shutdowns, or at the very least, reducing shutdown time. In order to achieve these objectives in cases where video surveillance technology is used, the speed at which technology is made available is critical.

In a typical airport scenario, when a threat is perceived, TSA has about two and a half minutes to determine if a threat is real before a full airport shutdown occurs. A false alarm can create significant delays, unnecessary concerns and considerable expenses. Unfortunately, the situations are all too common and costly. This is where video surveillance comes into play. Quick access to stored or real-time video can determine who triggered the security threat. It also can show a video history of a person?s activity to verify the threat. Preventing a complete airport shutdown through fast verification of a threat can save millions of dollars each time a threat occurs. When incidents occur, sophisticated technologies are needed to identify and alert security personnel. The faster technology works, the quicker the response time and the safer the airports become.

Take for instance a video security system integrated with PDA technology for wireless uploading of images used by field operations staff. The speed at which information is transferred is a function of video compression technology. As bits of information within a file increase due to higher resolution technology and recording speeds, so does the size of the file. Video systems that currently employ only MPEG or MPEG-4 technology are simply not going to perform at acceptable speeds. Relatively new H.264 compression technology can increase the speed of video transmission and/or storage by more than three to four times compared with MPEG-4 technology. Faster response times mean freeing up security resources to the threat quicker and more efficiently. Managing security events quickly and in real time, while resolving developing situations quickly, is determined by how fast critical information gets to the people in the field.

Improving compression technology is a part of the next wave of video surveillance, which may include video cameras in airplane cabins and cargo holds to monitor what happens when the plane is on the ground. Since an airplane is most vulnerable during this time, intelligent, efficient video surveillance can help identify and confirm a threat and impel action.

Improved Integration
The third area of improvement comes in the need to facilitate better integration with other support technologies. When people think about video surveillance in an airport, they think about areas of traffic related to passenger checkpoints. After all, each of the 9/11 perpetrators passed through such an area before boarding that final flight. The reality is video surveillance systems are now used at airports for a variety of purposes. This may include area surveillance in terminals, roadway and curbside baggage, cargo loading docks, tenant access points, baggage handling area access points to the security identification display area (SIDA), airport operations area (AOA) and other security areas. Cameras also are used for monitoring passenger traffic inside the SIDA, as well as passenger gate activities, vehicle traffic control, rental car facilities, fuel farm areas and passenger/employee parking areas.

Needless to say, with all of the variables involved in airport security, tomorrow's video surveillance system must be highly robust in order to protect important areas. The ability of video surveillance to interface with various technologies, such as access control, biometrics, serial data transmission, wireless, even improved input and output device control, critical for maximizing benefits to security systems.

For instance, when a driver's license is scanned by an airport screener, identification data stored in a law enforcement database should be linked to the scan, synchronized to the real-time video of the event, then sorted and checked against people known as potential security risks and fed immediately to field agents at the security checkpoint.

Similar integration with license plate recognition software is needed. When a vehicle owned or linked to a person of interest passes onto airport property, video technology working with license plate recognition software needs to be integrated with federal law enforcement database information to quickly access and alert security personnel. Communication through integration is the key. That's meaningful integration. And it's where integration needs to head in terms of video surveillance systems. Some systems are already capable of performing such tasks. More effort needs to be given to improve these types of performance capabilities.

Managing Information
The fourth area in which video surveillance systems must improve is in the ability to matrix, monitor and manage multiple cameras at a single time. Many surveillance systems today boast of "central station monitoring" capabilities. The reality is only a handful truly possess any serious capability of efficiently providing managed monitoring services. Most video surveillance systems can monitor only a few hundred cameras. With the ability to monitor several thousand cameras from a central location using a common security protocol developed specifically for airport security, several facilities can be monitored one at a time, creating large economies of scale in both performance and cost of deployment.

Offsite monitoring also can free up space constraint issues currently not available in many airports. Airports, unlike casinos, were never designed with the idea to employ large, full scale, professional video surveillance monitoring rooms and personnel. While the need for localized monitoring may never completely be eliminated, offsite help can act as a back up in certain cases. In other cases, it can serve as an instant increase of eyes monitoring the situation. When specific, credible security threat information is available through confirmed law enforcement channels, and is pointed at individual airport properties, a phone call can activate offsite central station video monitoring and add scores of dedicated eyes to watch critical areas of concern across multiple target locations. This capability creates significant economies of scale, allows law enforcement and airport facility security personnel the ability to pool resources and direct them to a real-time crisis on an as needed basis. In short, it provides that coveted overkill in trained surveillance personnel when and wherever they are needed without overstretching already tight budget concerns.

Since 9/11, millions of dollars have been spent on enhancing video surveillance capabilities throughout airport facilities nationwide. As video surveillance technology improves, airport security decision makers also must commit to absorbing continuous improvement costs in protecting facilities. While it would be nice to deploy the ultimate protective technology today and benefit from it for years to come, that's just not how the world works. Technology is growing at exponential rates. And airport security personnel, along with those in the industry, will continually be required to invest in enhanced technologies, including those involved in video surveillance.