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THE GLOBAL JOURNAL OF AIRPORT & AIRLINE SECURITY

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are you prepared? THE IDENTITY CHALLENGE

INTELLIGENT SURVEILLANCE

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AN INTERVIEW AVSEC
WITH: OPINION:
ABDULLA TONY
AL HASHIMI TYLER

AUGUST 2015 VOLUME 21 ISSUE 4 28 17

 SURVEILLANCE:
OBTAINING AN INTELLIGENT
PICTURE ACROSS THE AIRPORT
Modern international airports
are complex entities, similar in
character to small cities, and
with diverse stakeholder needs.
They are retail zones, workplaces
and busy transportation hubs
channelling millions of passengers
every year to destinations across
the globe. Keeping them safe,
secure and operationally efficient
is an ever-evolving challenge.
Passengers need to pass smoothly
from door to plane, which
means airport pinch points, such
as check-in, passport control,
baggage security, and the
gates have to be as efficient as
possible without compromising
on security. It’s a tricky balancing
act. Additionally, airport operators
know that supporting profitable
retail operations is as important
commercially as attracting airlines
and passengers. Employees and
infrastructure must be protected
too. All these requirements
make airports, perhaps more
than any other type of security
environment, dependent on
systems that can maintain and
guarantee constant situational
awareness. And this is where, as
Chris Bishop explains, surveillance
solutions can, and indeed do, play
a hugely important role.
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A
irports need to intelligently
monitor what is happening at
any one time in any given area
(whether it be passenger-side or relating
to ‘back-office’ operations) by taking a
holistic view of all systems and the data
they generate.
Capturing this kind of situational
awareness is achievable if managed
centrally through a surveillance command
and control platform that is fully integrated
with devices, including cameras, access
control devices, smoke and fire detection
systems, as well as devices specific to the
airport environment.
Such a solution enables data from
the multiple sources to be viewed,
managed and, more importantly,
interpreted in a single monitoring
and control environment. From there
it can be programmed to understand
threat scenarios, be used for security
or operations, flagging anomalies and
guiding operators through appropriate
response protocols.
Safety and Security
Airports already have some of the
most advanced security and safety
systems available, from baggage X-ray
technology, access control, and facial
recognition at passport control points to
state-of-the art fire, smoke and chemical
detection systems.
Independently, each system is
crucial, but when viewed and managed
together they become even more
powerful because connections between
isolated events can be made that may
not otherwise be detected.
For example, a ‘person of interest’
identified at passport control may
normally trigger one level of response
– an alert to surveillance operators
who can then visually track movement
through the airport on their screens.
But what if a staff member with access
to sensitive areas, not meant to be on
shift, logs in at the same time as an
item of luggage has been left for a
prolonged period in a specific area? If
taken into account as cumulative events
(rather than separate), heightened levels
of action could be required.
Importantly, the surveillance solutions
that enable this over-arching, intelligent
view of security systems also offer the
resilience airports require. Because
they typically serve as the gateways
to national security, airports cannot
experience downtime where actions like
video recording experience interruption.
Ensuring the highest level of resilience
and redundancy is, therefore, essential
and leading systems suppliers will always
design it into enterprise class solutions
offered for this demanding sector.
Operational Efficiency
In an airport setting it’s not simply
security threats that are problematic.
Operational concerns may also arise
and, once again, integrated surveillance
solutions can help.
For example, staff can be alerted
that passenger or baggage handling
bottlenecks are happening and can then
quickly respond by issuing workflow
prompts to relevant teams in order to
resolve the situation.
August 2015 Aviationsecurityinternational
 Ensuring staff are well-trained is another
area where airports are increasingly
turning to surveillance. For instance, video
surveillance around airport aprons can
ensure correct safety and security protocols
are being followed. It can also monitor pilot
‘parking’ performance and how ground
staff approach arriving planes.
Any immediate dangers can be identified
and dealt with in real-time, while recorded
footage is automatically categorised and
logged for post-event training.
Smart Airports – Future Focus
Of course it isn’t just airport surveillance
technology that has undergone a period of
rapid and exciting capability development.
Airports are getting ‘smarter’.
For example, the use of tracking
beacons is becoming much more
widespread - transmitters that issue push
notifications to passengers’ smart devices.
These notifications (for example advising
passengers to have certain documentation
ready for security checks, when to go to
their gate, or of gate changes) aid foot flow
through an airport’s most significant pinch
points, improving customer experience
and streamlining operations.
Electronic self-check-ins and
smartphone boarding pass systems have
also become a common sight – their
purpose is to aid efficiency while boosting
passenger satisfaction.
Furthermore, these technologies share
another common thread: they are all
collection points for data that, if integrated
with other sub-systems through a central
command and control platform, provide
valuable insight that can further improve
safety, security and airport operations.
Not only does merging data sources
enable a truly holistic view, it also implies
that in the future, abuse of ‘smart tech’
will be difficult to achieve.
For example, a passenger may report
their smartphone as stolen to airport
security. If any attempt is made to use
the electronic boarding pass it contains,
an intelligently integrated command and
control solution could be used to detect
this as a security breach and pull up footage
from the nearest cameras to identify and
track the individual concerned.
Beyond Boundaries
While it is clear that the right integrated
surveillance command and control solution
can help airports gain a better understanding
of everything happening inside their
building, what about outside environment?
Once again, information is key.
“…video surveillance
around airport aprons can
ensure correct safety and
security protocols are being
followed…”
Due to the level of integration now
available with open architecture command
and control platforms, we expect airports
will find more and more ways to use
them. Detecting maintenance issues or
delays affecting incoming rail links is just
one example. If the rail link is airport-
owned, this could be programmed to
automatically deploy maintenance teams
who would also be able to update ‘task
status’ via mobile phone integration.
Even if not airport-owned, alerts may go
directly to check-in staff to warn them
of possible late arrivals and bottlenecks
caused by rail delays.
The same principles apply to road
links. Integrating airport surveillance with
surrounding Automatic Number Plate
Recognition (ANPR) cameras could help
quickly identify ‘suspect’ vehicles in the
vicinity, or traffic issues that might affect
arrivals, and relevant airport teams might
be alerted.

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August 2015 Aviationsecurityinternational www.asi-mag.com 23


Safe City Ambition
Looking even further ahead, we are
likely to witness this kind of intelligent
integration on a much grander scale.
The concept of ‘Safe Cities’ has risen to
the forefront recently and is based on the
idea that, through collaborative use and
deployment of technologies and digital
projects, the security and operational
information flow that governs our cities can
be improved and used more effectively.
Essentially, the quest is on to streamline
and manage ‘big data’ (data originating
from multiple agencies and organisations)
in such a way that safety in our towns and
cities is dramatically enhanced.
As the international gateways to our
cities, airports will always be key to any
Safe City strategy implementation.
So how will this work in practice? Just
as intelligently integrated command and
control solutions enable airports to achieve
a holistic view of their own operations, in the
future, open platform technology will enable
a city-wide perspective that facilitates more
in-depth and rapid collaboration between
different city stakeholders.
To demonstrate this, consider the
following scenario. A fire occurs at a
chemical plant located just outside a
major city. Emergency teams are called
to the location. They can control the
fire but they cannot control the smoke
which, given the strong winds, is heading
towards the city airport. One of the city’s
largest schools also sits in the projected
path of the potentially toxic smoke and in
less than an hour children will be leaving
for home. If this information isn’t shared,
citizen health is at severe risk and air
traffic chaos is highly likely.
Now consider the same event again.
A fire alarm is triggered at the plant.
Simultaneously, at the on-site command
and control centre, visual feeds
automatically stream from the nearest
cameras and readings from chemical
detection sensors.
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Terminal 3 Ultimate at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport
The operator is able to see the location
of the fire and receives confirmation that
hazardous smoke has been detected.
A workflow prompts the operator to
instigate evacuation procedures, call the
fire department, lock-down key site zones
and check wind direction with the city
weather station.
On confirming that wind speed and
smoke density pose a threat, the operator
is then prompted to call air traffic control,
and the city police to issue ‘stay-indoors
warnings’. Receiving the information, air
traffic control know they have two hours
before smoke from the fire is likely to start
impacting on flights and are able to instigate
emergency planning protocols accordingly.
While this kind of city-wide systems
integration is still at a relatively embryonic
stage as a concept, it is a theory that
should become a reality sooner than we
might expect.
“…just south of Beijing, an
airport is being developed that
when fully constructed will
have a land footprint the size
of Bermuda…”
Size and Scalability
Undoubtedly, intelligent systems integration
offers many benefits. However, it is important
to note that there are also challenges. One
of the biggest – quite literally – is the sheer
size of modern airports.
Presently, Mexico City is building
what will be the biggest airport in the
Americas; while just south of Beijing, an
airport is being developed that when fully
constructed will have a land footprint the
size of Bermuda.
These ‘super airports’ perfectly
outline the need for systems integration
but also demand the need for careful
planning. Considering the immense size
of the information pool generated by
developments of this scale, the data mining
capabilities of surveillance command and
control technology become invaluable.
Ensuring that provision is made to
accommodate the quantity and quality of
storage requirements for the here and now
is essential. Equally important, however, is
safeguarding system design to take into
account future expansion so that down the
line storage can easily be scaled.
Though an airport might only need 100
cameras at initial installation, additional
terminals or boosts to infrastructure
investment may require 1000 or more
channels to be added as soon as a year later.
For this reason, solutions need to be scalable.
By way of example, the Indonesian
Government has plans to boost annual
passenger numbers beyond 60 million
people. To achieve this they are adding
Terminal 3 Ultimate at Jakarta’s Soekarno-
Hatta International Airport, in conjunction with
the revitalisation of Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.
Airport operator PT. Angkasa Pura II (Persero)
- (AP II) has selected a surveillance command
and control platform that meets immediate
requirements and will also accommodate
expansion as and when required throughout
the development of the new terminal.
KPMG estimates that by 2036, around
50 new runways will have been built in the
world’s major cities in order to keep pace
with demand for air travel, making system
scalability a top priority. When it comes
to systems integration and the resulting
storage requirements, fail to plan and you
can certainly plan to fail.
Size and scalability aside, airports know
that they must become smarter to manage
disparate video and data streams in a way
that provides an optimum outcome for all
of their stakeholders.
The challenge they face is large but
with the latest technology, used in the
right way, it is not insurmountable.
Chris Bishop is International Business
Development Manager at Synectics.
August 2015 Aviationsecurityinternational