From Combat to Commercial
Exploring innovations that evolved from defense initiatives into daily life
- By John Bradburn, Mark Clifton
- Dec 01, 2009
There is no question that advancements in video are continually
revolutionizing the security industry. New capabilities
emerge and, subsequently, the scope of what is possible
grows. The implications of this trend can be seen in surveillance,
reconnaissance, identity verification, information management and
data dissemination.
Current system implementations provide security operators with
a multitude of information about their respective environments, but
effective solutions for processing this information are still few and far
between. With a one-to-one camera-to-monitor ratio, operators must
analyze vast walls of individual screens that project narrow fields of
view to detect possible threats. These stand-alone systems allow users
to view their facility or areas in segments, not as a whole, creating
information overload and limiting their ability to put critical video information in context.
Traditionally, the commercial marketplace
has been more prudent than its government
or military counterparts, in that it
is comfortable with the tried-and-true methods
and less apt to adopt progressive new
technologies.
In times of national crisis, however, it is
the military and government sectors that are
utilizing cutting-edge innovations to create
more effective solutions, meeting war-time
needs that over time also meet everyday
commercial needs. Many of the technology
advancements we see today began with the
requirement to fulfill the military's need to
protect its warfighters. Take, for example,
GPS. This technology, using satellites to locate,
map and guide drivers, originated from
the military's need to travel effectively in hostile
and unfamiliar environments.
Advancing Technologies
As defense-oriented technologies develop,
they gain traction in commercial spaces because
they fulfill increasingly rigorous yet
similar needs. In the security industry, distinct
parallels can be drawn between the needs of a
military unit deployed overseas in a forward
operating base and a sensitive facility such as
a nuclear power plant on national soil.
In both markets, the need for persistent
surveillance is paramount to mitigate threats,
protect critical assets and ensure the safety
of human life. Technology has evolved to
meet this need. For example, capabilities for
enhanced ground and aerial surveillance, object
tracking, wide-area change detection and
sensor networking are being used in military
operations and becoming more prevalent in
commercial security spaces.
Persistent surveillance products are transitioning
from a high-tech commodity to a
necessity for security operators. The ability to
not only detect potential threats but to track
their movement across a large area gives
these operators an increased advantage—
providing early warning that allows for more
effective decision making. Likewise, geolocation
technologies that assign coordinates to
every pixel of an image in real time were developed
to give soldiers increased awareness
of their location and surroundings. In the
commercial market, this capability allows users
to employ video to track vehicles, locate
personnel or dispatch security teams to precise
locations if a threat is detected.
Biometrics is another technology that
originated from defense needs and is transitioning
into the commercial market. In
hostile environments, the need for absolute
identification is vital—verifying who is entering
a military base or crossing a border
helps keep these sensitive installments secure.
Biometric technologies, such as iris recognition,
solve this issue by offering accurate
identification for access control and security
operations. From a commercial perspective,
this type of security could be used to protect
a wide variety of areas—airports, critical
infrastructures, iconic monuments and large
entertainment or sports venues. As this technology
continues to evolve, we can expect to
see a more widespread adoption of it in our
daily lives.
The Role of Video Surveillance
The ability to exploit video has been a signifi-
cant advantage in the defense industry. With
mountains of video to sort through, understanding
the information becomes a tiresome
and complicated, if not impossible, task.
Video exploitation solutions like Sarnoff's
TerraSight™ product suite created better
ways to not only process vast amounts of
data but to put it into context. Forensics, surveillance
and security markets also depend
on video to solve problems, answer questions
and react to events quickly. Advancements in
video exploitation have enabled users in both
markets to make better use of the data they
collect by putting seemingly disparate video
imagery into a single, comprehensive view.
The result is information that makes sense
and allows users to be proactive rather than
reactive using real-time monitoring, threat
detection and rapid response.
In addition to exploiting video, capabilities
for video enhancement also have transitioned
from the defense industry into commercial
security. Technological advancements
for perimeter surveillance, such as night vision,
infrared, stabilization and fusion, allow
sensors to function more intelligently. When
this technology is embedded into the sensor,
it reduces workload for the camera operator.
Defense-oriented innovations have created
smart "systems on a chip" that allow
the sensor and camera systems to intelligently
collect and transmit surveillance data
while managing bandwidth congestion—all
without overloading the operator. Given
that information overload and user fatigue
are common issues for commercial security,
this type of technology will become more
prevalent and streamline the way operators
capture video and generate useable information
from it.
Making the Most of Information
For any security application—military or
commercial—quickly getting to the right information
is the most critical asset. Without
it, users make decisions in a vacuum and are
unable to do their jobs effectively or on time.
On the other hand, too much information
can be just as detrimental. Too many cameras
transmitting to too many monitors can
cause essential information to get lost, and
the risk of a security breach increases.
Military installments are impacted with
this problem when conducting surveillance
and reconnaissance missions—amassing tremendous
amounts of video from manned
and unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras on
towers and ground stations. Tower-mounted
sensors and air assets also are key to security
services, such as law enforcement, infrastructure
protection and border patrol. However,
many of these sensors are stand-alone systems,
unable to cross-cue footage or track
suspicious objects on the move.
The need for information networking has
never been greater and, once again, technology
has evolved to meet this need. Software
solutions like TerraSight are able to network
multiple sensors, combining the imagery to
form one common picture of an entire area,
draped over a 3-D image map and terrain.
Commercially, this technology is already beginning
to transition from its military origins
into urban and metropolitan markets and will
likely become a pervasive capability for users
in these areas within the next five years.
Storing and cataloging data for retrieval
and dissemination also is a key challenge.
Most everyone has some type of camera device
today. YouTube is a good commercial
example of how to publish and retrieve content
from a massive database, which can be a
challenge for both military and commercial
security operators.
There are examples of successful technology
transitions nearly everywhere, and nowhere
is this more evident than in the security
industry. Whether for military missions
or civilian day-to-day life, technologies that
may seem disparate wind up combining and
evolving to become incredibly effective solutions.
The sheer number of sensors and their
vast array of different capabilities (e.g., motion
detection, temperature,
acoustic, unmanned or biometric)
suggest that system
networking and integration
is the key to the future of
security systems.