Top Technologies for Paramount Threats SDM Magazine
"For open areas, outdoor PIRs and photoelectric beams haven’t been replaced. Rather, radar technology is being used to “supplements gaps that couldn’t be filled by long-range PIRs or beams,” says Brent Franklin, President of Unlimited Technology in Chester Springs, Pa. “The ground-based radar is filling the void when you have a mixed terrain like land and water. The manufacturers have taken a military technology and adapted it for the security industry."
66 September 2007
Top Technologies for Paramount Threats
By Laura Stepanek, Editor
On the top rung of the ladder of
outdoor and perimeter security
projects are operations considered
as critical infrastructure and
heavy industry: sea and river ports, dams,
utilities, and chemical plants. All have very
unique requirements for intrusion or “threat”
detection and all have distinctly different
facility and topographical layouts.
“Eighty percent of what we do is outdoor
related,” says Rob Hile, vice president of business
development at Adesta LLC, Omaha,
Neb., which ranks No. 14 on SDM’s 2007 Top
Systems Integrators Report. “We specialize in
large corporate campuses and industrial complexes,
seaports, and dams and locks. Those
are all large acreage outdoor challenges in
terms of surveillance, long distances, and tend
to be very comprehensive in terms of integrating
multiple technologies.”
The majority of perimeter security projects
designed by Universal Security Systems,
Hauppauge, N.Y., are in the firm’s core vertical
markets of industry and infrastructure.
These include public utilities, petro-chemical
facilities, and government operations.
“We’re seeing a mix of utilizing existing,
time-proven technology as well as starting
to introduce a number of new technologies
in terms of the sensors that we’re using to
protect the perimeter,” relates Ed Newman,
vice president of the firm ranked as No. 68
on SDM’s Top Systems Integrators Report.
Some of the latest security technologies
that can meet the demanding requirements of
such facilities are millimeter wave radar systems,
video analytics and fiber optic intrusion
sensors for fence lines, Newman says.
Radars, of course, were developed in the
1940s, but are relatively new to the security
integration market.
“All of these technologies are designed to
not call a central station. They’re designed
to improve situational awareness for the
security operator — having a human being
responding,” Newman says, meaning that
these technologies are not for your everyday,
middle commercial market.
While it may seem that the potential market
for these types of technologies is slight, in fact
there are some significant opportunities for
implementing them in the United States:
• 300 ports
• 80,000 dams
• 66,000 chemical plants
• 2,800 power plants
• 300,000 energy production sites
A true integrated approach is necessary
because these facilities involve both a vast
outdoor area — sometimes with a fence line
and sometimes not — as well as an interior
structure, such as an operations center.
“One of the more interesting projects we’ve done
is the seaport of Corpus Christi, Texas, over a $5
million project,” Hile says. “It was to provide integrated
physical security, access control, and intrusion
detection systems utilizing video analytics.”
Others are the ports of Houston, Los Angeles,
Long Beach, Baltimore, and Mobile, Ala.,
where the solution used video analytics to
monitor vessel traffic in and out of the port. A
major component of that project was a network
that facilitated communication to port police.
Due to the large-scale coverage area of a port,
many of Adesta’s projects include a major communication
backbone of either fiber or wireless.
The company has a communications division, “so
we can combine not only the security technologies,
but the infrastructure that allows the video and data
to flow back to the command and control center,”
Hile explains.
“We are particularly excited about the recent
contract award Adesta received from the Port of
Long Beach,” says Bob Sommerfeld, president of
Adesta.
THE THREAT & THE CHALLENGE
“Typically in a port environment you have a tremendous
amount of fence or perimeter footage,”
Hile says. “Not only that, you’ve got threats that
are land-based or water-based, so that makes it
even more difficult to secure. There are multiple
technologies you would use over water or fence
detection, which is why you’re going see that surveillance,
when combined with sophisticated video
analytics, is the de facto standard for security for
ports, because you can cover large amounts of area
with one camera that’s properly positioned.”
Video analytics, Hile explains, allow guards to
function more effectively “because the analytics
help them do their jobs,” he says. “You’re more
secure, it’s easier to operate, less false alarms, and
you can cover a vast amount of area with just one
camera. Today, [it] is definitely a viable technology.
It is highly reliable; the customers are becoming more
used to using it.”
Ports are considered harsh environments because of the sea
water, which often causes products to break down or generate
too many false alarms.
In addition, the nature of the threat can vary widely from port
to port, partly because port operations vary in the type of cargo,
Hile says. But, in general, all ports need to monitor the flow
in and out of the facility. Authorities need to understand the
destination of a vessel or truck, and monitor when it leaves
to make sure it has the correct cargo and is heading in the
right direction. A security system’s job is to detect anomalies
in those patterns, Hile explains.
“And then it gets deeper than that,” he reveals.
“Once these vessels or trucks get where they’re going,
they use the access control to identify that the people
getting on and off are supposed to be in the vessels that
they are in.”
Adesta works closely with its access control system
vendors to ensure they are ready for TWIC,
which corresponds to the Transportation Workers
Identity Credential, and also to design the system so
that port security officials can easily and accurately
identify individuals traversing through the ports.
Hile explains that one of the greatest potential
threats is someone bringing a dirty bomb or nuclear
bomb into the country through a port of entry.
A common approach among port security buyers
is “from the curb in,” Hile says, meaning the
security solution begins at the extended perimeter
of the port and moves inward. Adesta is part of an
organization called the American Association of
Port Authorities.
“Most of the port operations we deal with, if
there’s a threat, we want to identify that threat
from as far away as possible so they can deal with
it before it gets close. It’s a very sound philosophy,”
he emphasizes.
It’s a philosophy echoed in the infrastructure and
industrial markets, also, agrees Universal Security’s
Newman. It has caused customers in those markets
to seek advanced technologies to provide early
detection and thus, more reaction time to a threat
before it becomes an actual intrusion, he says.
“In the past, most of the sensors were intrusion
detection systems. Intrusion detection, by its nature,
detects the event after it’s happened,” Newman says.
“One of the things we’re trying to move toward is
early warning, or threat detection. Instead of detecting
the event of person climbing the fence, we want to see
somebody walking on the other side of the fence.
“With systems such as video analytics and radar, I
can now push my sensing ability beyond my perimeter
into either other privately owned property or
public spaces,” Newman relates.
A good example is waterfront area, because most
waterfront is public domain with little restriction
on who can traverse it.
“The concern is that a person in a boat could pull
right up to the dock at a refinery or nuclear power
plant and you wouldn’t know it until the person
climbed right up on the dock, which is too late,”
Newman explains. “Now, with this new technology,
we can detect that person as they approach the
dock and be proactive with the response.”
The response can be automated, such as tracking
with cameras or making audible announcements to
leave the premises; or it can be to dispatch security
personnel to the location.
THE TECHNOLOGY: RADAR
For open areas, outdoor PIRs and photoelectric
beams haven’t been replaced. Rather, radar technology
is being used to “supplements gaps that
couldn’t be filled by long-range PIRs or beams,”
says Brent Franklin, president of Unlimited Technology
in Chester Springs, Pa. “The ground-based
radar is filling the void when you have a mixed
terrain like land and water. The manufacturers have
taken a military technology and adapted it for the security industry.”
OUTDOOR SECURITY
In the projects done by Universal Security Systems,
the radar system will connect multiple radar
detection devices to a computer network back to
a server, which will process the information and
present it in a usable form to the security operator,
Newman explains.
Most radar systems are capable of tracking dozens
of targets simultaneously — not like a traditional
sensor where the zone is either on or off,
Newman claims.
The target creates a “radar signature,” allowing
all sorts of potential threats to be tracked, such as
people, cars and trucks, boats, and sometimes even
local air traffic, Newman admits.
In operation, a radar system would be integrated
with a camera system for tracking targets as they
are detected and for recording surveillance images.
But only in certain situations, such as a boat that
comes down a river and stops within a set distance
of the dock, will an alarm be triggered and a security
operator be required to respond.
The installed cost of a single radar is approximately
$100,000, Newman quotes, adding that a
typical installation might involve two radars. “It
seems like a lot of money, but when you look at the
cost to employ a beam-based system, it’s often that
much or more,” he says.
Equally important as the radar is the tracking
camera, because even if the radar can detect a
threat, your customers’ security responders may
not be able to see it, Newman explains. Much
depends on whether it’s day or night, and on
weather conditions. “We’re selling a lot of thermal
imaging systems, because they work off of infrared.
They’re not degraded by rain or snow; it will
see much better. We’ve done tests and demonstrations
at night and in heavy fog and snow and the
results are amazing in terms of being able to detect
and view these threats,” Newman relates.
“The most powerful presentation we do is a radar
with a thermal imaging camera right on top. It lets
us go out at night in bad weather and show that we
can detect and visually confirm a threat a mile outdoors
at night in rain, snow and fog by using these
two military technologies,” Newman says.
THE TECHNOLOGY: VIDEO ANALYTICS
Universal Security began using video analytics
three or four years ago, taking a cautious approach
to it at first. “While we quickly found that the basic
technology worked, we found that the level of
expectation of the customers was much higher than
the product could provide,” Newman admitted.
OUTDOOR SECURITY
He explains that there was a learning process
that involved determining a realistic percentage to
achieve for detection as well as for false alarms.
“The two are very closely interrelated. In many
cases we were able to achieve 100 percent detection,
but at a very high cost on the false alarm side.
We also found that the typical environment that
video analytics have been demonstrated at and often
tested, do not necessarily reflect where the customer
wanted them to work in the real world,” he says.
Sites that Universal Security faced were areas
often filled with large groups of people, moving
vehicles, trees where the foliage moves around,
lighting conditions such as shadows and reflections,
as well as textures such as gravel or material
on shelves. “Analytics work very well when you
have high contrast, large objects and smooth backgrounds.
When we try to introduce analytics in a
scenario where we have shadows and trees moving
around, the analytic is much more challenged by
that environment,” Newman relates.
Universal Security has invested time, Newman
says, to work with manufacturers to enhance software
to work in such situations. Something that
people don’t understand or know about video
analytics is the great amount of processing power
that’s required, Newman thinks.
“To be able to do one channel of ‘object-leftbehind,’
we actual need to do not only object-leftbehind,
but we have to look for reflection of object.
We need to look for shadows. We need to look for
people and be able to say that person standing there
is not an object left behind. We need to be able to
look for headlights. It lets us maximize the sensitivity
of object-left-behind and process this event through
these other algorithms. ‘Hey, this looks like an object
left behind – is it a tree, a shadow, a person?’After it
runs through all these filters, if it still gets to the bottom,
then we report it as an object-left-behind. The
pros and cons are we’re able to achieve a very high
level of detection and a low level of falsing, so you get
a very happy customer. The video analytic that cries
wolf too often will just get ignored,” he relates.
“The downside is it takes a lot of processing
power to do that. If we’re going to run one detection
algorithm and it needs seven filters, that’s eight
algorithms that the computer has to run. So the systems
that we’re selling would take eight times the
processing power or take up eight times as much
space on the computer. So where brand A can run
32 channels on this computer, we’re only going to
run four,” Newman explains.
OUTDOOR SECURITY
Other ways that a video analytics solution can
challenge integrators is in the camera stability. Hile
explains that early generations of video analytics
worked with other manufacturers’ cameras, but
to speed up the evolution of the software and to
compensate for products such as image stabilization
and low light, some analytics companies began
developing their own cameras in order to enhance
the ability for their cameras to work.
Typically in port or other outdoor applications,
cameras are mounted 80 to 100 feet and higher, and
can be affected by wind. Image stabilization compensates
for any potential sway to the camera.
“So analytics are getting better because the surveillance
technologies are getting better,” Hile explains.
He believes that later versions of analytics are
much more precise to the market’s needs. With early
systems, “if you wanted a different solution, you had
to go to a different manufacturer. Some worked very
good over water and some didn’t. Some did a very
good job of detecting vehicles stopping where they
weren’t supposed to and some didn’t.
“Later versions are building in more functionality.
Some have a package preconfigured out of the
box. It comes with the camera, housing, lens, analytics
software — and it’s tuned for that solution,
for a specific threat application,” Hile says.
True video analytics that can function in environments
such as ports or expansive utility plants can be
very expensive to deploy, to the tune of $10,000 per
channel installed. This is in contrast to lower-end systems
in which all the customer may need is intelligent
motion detection, which can be installed at around
$1,000 per channel, Newman says.
“On the higher end there is a significant amount
of professional services that go into it to tune the
product. There might be nine days worth of labor to
adjust it and to analyze data and tune the program to
get you that 99 percent accuracy,” he claims.
Markets expressing interest in utilizing video
analytics are critical infrastructure such as ports,
utilities, hospitals, petro-chemical, government,
airports and mass transit, integrators say.
“We’ve seen a lot of interest from all kinds of
unusual applications, and I think as the industry
evolves, we’ll go from maybe two dozen analytics
generally available right now, to maybe thousands,”
Newman says.
THE TECHNOLOGY: FIBER-BASED FENCE SENSORS
One newer technology integrators are depending
on for critical infrastructure sites is fiber optic
perimeter sensors, and there are several companies
that make solutions. Integrators claim that the
larger the site, the better suited it is for perimeter
fence detection using fiber optics. The reason is
because of its precise detection capabilities.
OUTDOOR SECURITY
“Traditionally [vibration detection systems]
worked well where you have a large perimeter fence
line. The problem is it has these big detection zones.
If you have a 20-mile perimeter it might only have 20
zones. Somewhere along the fence, somebody just
climbed over or cut the fence,” Newman says.
The advantage of some of today’s fiber-based
systems is that they can detect a breach to within a
few meters of where the vibration is.
“We’re seeing more interest in those systems
now. But you need to have a very large perimeter to
make that effective. The computer head end can cost
upwards of a few thousand dollars. Per foot on the
perimeter, it might only be a dollar per foot, but you
have to get past this initial big cost,” he explains.
The market for fiber detection includes sites
such as refineries and airports. “Some of the other
infrastructure clients such as utilities tend to fall
off because their properties tend to be smaller. The
system works well when you have 300 or 3,000
acres versus 30 acres,” Newman thinks.
Unlimited Technology, ranked No. 77 on SDM’s
Top Systems Integrators Report, also has applied fiber
fence detection technology in critical infrastructure
and airports. “It’s not something that the small private
sector would get into. It’s a larger scale technology
that would be used in more mission-critical applications,
such as pipelines,” says Ian Francisco, principal
and CTO of Unlimited Technology.
Francisco likes the technology because it is not
affected by weather conditions or electrical interference,
and it has a very low false alarm rate. “It’s
almost impossible to get around it,” he claims.
The fiber acts as a passive transducer. “The fiber
being passive is the first key and the head-end,
which is very complicated, is the second. It was
developed with a built-in algorithm to tune out
most of the items that cause false alarms.
“The second ‘pro’ is the fact that we can go 160
kilometers on that system and it will detect plus or
minus 10 feet of where someone is on the fence. This
will allow you to put a camera on the intruder. No
boxes are needed out in the field,” Francisco says.
The initial cost for the head-end can run approximately
$200,000, he adds, and then it’s a fixed cost
per foot.
“The system is very accurate, very low maintenance,
and easily administered from remote command
centers.”