Information management systems help increase port security

Going With the Flow

Improving port and waterway transportation security are essential strategies for continuing homeland security. Providing port and waterway security entails regulating the flow of traffic from ports and harbors and across the nation’s waterways so dangerous and unwanted goods and people are detected and denied entry. This requires a sophisticated information management system that balances the need for securing the waterways with facilitating an essential free flow of legitimate commerce, citizens and authorized visitors.

Every waterway information system, no matter how simple or advanced, consist of several key parts. These key components include sensors, data storage and analysis, and visualization of the system.

Waterway Information System
This figure shows a typical waterway information system that receives information from several types of sensors, stores and analyses that information, and then provides the users a view of the waterway operations through dynamic Web pages and more advanced command and control displays.

Sensoring the Waterway Environment
Remote sensors provide the “eyes” of any waterway information system. A small river port might consist of a few surveillance cameras, and on a large, deep-water port, sensors might include radar, sonar, infrared cameras and environmental sensors. Wireless technology allows us to remotely place sensors to monitor vessel transit, marine mammal habitat and other coastal areas of environmental, commercial, recreational and, of course, security interests. The broadband nature of high-bandwidth networks on the water allows incorporation of bandwidth-hogging video/voice applications, along with arrays of environmental sensors, which are essentially low-data rate.

Combining sensor and telemetry modules with inexpensive housing yields wireless sensor system nodes capable of being scaled into networks. Depending on the sensitivity of the waterway being monitored, the sensor network might include acoustic doppler current profilers; turbidity; underwater cameras for bottom topography/habitat monitoring; hydrophone bio classification monitors; acoustic imagers for biomass monitoring; water quality sensor stack; or nutrient sensors.

About the Author

Timothy D. Ringgold, Colonel, Army (Ret.), is the CEO of Defense Solutions LLC, based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at (610) 833-6000.

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