Port Of Wilmington To Monitor Non-TWIC Visitors With Siemens Video Surveillance System
Recently, Port of Wilmington security officials received the Coast Guard’s permission to leverage its Siveillance SiteIQ video surveillance system to monitor truckers and port visitors not carrying Transportation Worker Identification Credential.
Because POW can provide 24/7 monitoring of designated secure areas via its SiteIQ video analytics platform, the port can comply with TWIC mandates without having to physically escort non-credentialed individuals traversing the busy Wilmington, Del. port facility.
According to Patrick Hemphill, manager of port security, without the ability to rely on SiteIQ, complying with the escort provisions instituted by TWIC had the potential to strain security resources and operating budgets.
The Coast Guard’s compliance ruling was welcome news Hemphill said.
“The Coast Guard advised us that if we were able to ensure 24/7 monitoring of certain ‘secure areas’ that we use for vehicle staging and other operational reasons, we would not have to provide ‘physical’ escorts for vehicles and their drivers,” he said. “This will help us reduce our costs involved with TWIC compliance and implementation.”
For busy ports workers and traffic wax and wane seasonally. For a variety of reasons many seeking access to the port, especially overland trucks and drivers entering to further transship goods, will simply not have TWIC identification and will require an escort.
On busy days, hundreds of trucks and visitors may have to be escorted, causing a bottleneck that would soon slow operations to a standstill. Site IQ’s capabilities are optimized for the kind of monitoring allowed for by the TWIC guidance. With SiteIQ, vehicles are greeted at the gatehouse, drivers ID’d and passed through. They are digitally monitored at the point of entry with analytics tracking all vehicles transiting the facility. Any unauthorized movement into restricted areas is instantly flagged and dealt with accordingly.
“Securing port operations is a monumental task and technologies like SiteIQ can add considerable value by helping manage emerging Department of Homeland Security regulations cost effectively while improving security overall relative to the new requirements,” says Siemens Building Technologies Security Solutions’ global head and CEO, Frank Pedersen. “SiteIQ is a powerful tool that the Port of Wilmington’s security personnel can now leverage even more fully to achieve its security and operational goals.”
Part of a suite of technologies delivered under the global Siveillance brand of Siemens Building Technologies security solutions, SiteIQ is developed and marketed from its Atlanta-based Center of Competence established in 2007.