Transport Security

Is technology the magic bullet for airport security?

By Amelia Kwok | 1 October 2008

Airports are a laboratory for some of the most advanced security solutions. From scanners to RFID tracking and ccTv - we find out what are the latest solutions deployed at airports.

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Terrorism has always posed as a major problem for airports and travellers, way before the 9/11 attacks, while airport security has been a top priority since the 1970s, when hijackings and bombings were the weapon of choice for militant organisations around the world, for both passengers and the airport itself.

However, the 9/11 incident did issue a global wakening to airports around the world – that security simply was not sufficient. Recently, the Marriott hotel bombing at Islamabad in Pakistan has prompted tighter security at the city’s airport, since the authorities received a telephone call threatening an attack on the capital’s international airport.

Indeed, the fundamental nature of airports – as a gateway with large concentrations of people, renders it vulnerable to treacherous attacks. Airport security poses as the first line of defence in attempting to prevent possible terrorist-related activities within the premises, and the aircraft. Airport officials have consistently turned to technology to help boost the level of security in the premises.

According to Zeev Sarig, Managing Director of Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel, technology is an imperative at airports. “In order to maintain a high level of security in the airport, very intelligent, smart and advanced technology needs to be deployed. Preferably, as much trustworthy technology as possible.”

Similarly in Australia, the government is deploying the latest technology to increase the level of security at the airports. “We have been aware for some time that technology is moving on and the Australian government is trialling a range of advanced technologies that can help to better detect explosive devices and other sorts of weapons that might be used to disrupt aviation,” said Paul Retter, Executive Director of the Office of Transport Security in Australia.

Globally, all airports place passenger safety as their top priority, hence airports are practically a laboratory for some of the most advanced security solutions in deployment today.

Seeing through you

The screening and tracking of passengers and their baggages has evolved to be a crucial and necessary measure at airports. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, at least 730 million people travel on passenger jets every year, while more than 700 million pieces of baggages are screened for explosives and other dangerous items. This sheer volume necessitates the stringent and thorough checks.

When going through airport security checks, the latest technology deployed to screen passengers and their bags, are body scanners that will project a silhouette of the person onto the screen, to detect well-hidden hazardous objects.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the US recently started using body scans on randomly chosen airline passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver and New York’s Kennedy airport.

“We will not roll out body imagings that do not have very high standards of privacy protection,” said Kip Hawley, TSA chief. “We will use a variety of measures including software that may obscure some features.”

Similarly, at the Adelaide airport in Australia, body scanners are being trialed as part of a potential security upgrade. The body scanner produces a naked image of a person and participation will be voluntary.

“During the trial, travellers will be able to choose the existing hand luggage scanners and walkthrough metal detectors, or they could choose the technology trial lane and provide feedback on the technologies. Officers examining the images would not see the actual person. Faces are blurred and images are not saved,” said Retter.

At the Ben-Gurion airport, Sarig believes that “security goes hand in hand with passenger services. Security measures should not interfere with the operations of an airport. It should be part of the system that provides passengers security without disturbing their activities.”

Hence Sarig feels that allaying passengers’ fears while protecting their privacy is also an important element in airport security. “We’ve put in place a range of measures to ensure that privacy issues are dealt with effectively. This includes talking with the privacy commissioner and making sure that the faces of those people being scanned are blurred and that the screening officer looking at the image that is on the screen is removed from the screening point,” added Retter.

“If despite all our best efforts we fail to keep a would-be terrorist off an airplane, at least we must make sure that suicide bombers cannot smuggle the explosives they need to cause a catastrophe past the airport checkpoint and onto the aircraft,” said Hawley.

Tracking your baggage with RFID

Barcode tracking of luggages are a thing of the past. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is the latest baggage tracking solution for airports around Asia. Currently, if a barcode tag is not printed properly or it gets wet or crumpled, it cannot be read by lasers in the baggage system. This requires a baggage handler to manually determine where the lost luggage should go. RFID overcomes this problem because it can be read without line of sight by handheld or mounted readers, even at distances of more than 20 feet.

RFID serves the same purpose as a bar code or a magnetic strip on the back of a credit card or ATM card; it provides a unique identifier for that object. The chips contain stored information including the bag’s unique ID number and route.

In 2005, the Hong Kong Airport deployed RFID for baggage tracking and became the first airport in Asia to have the single largest deployment of RFID for security purposes.

Airport in Thailand, the Kuala Lumpur Airport in Malaysia and Changi Airport in Singapore, RFID is being used to track passengers’ baggages. “RFID tracking of baggage is a crucial element in the reliability and safety of the airport. However, it is also important to concentrate on the threat itself and not on all passengers as this will hinder efficiency and cause inconvenience to both staff and passengers,” said Sarig.

Technology, when implemented correctly, can not only help prevent terrorism acts, but also help the airport save money. For example, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Passenger Forecast study 2004 to 2008, “current data for the aviation industry show that the average occurrence of mishandled bags is four out of 1000. Also, every misplaced or mishandled bags costs the responsible airline approximately US$100 per bag,” said Andrew Price, Project Manager RFID at IATA.

Reconciling baggage is not only important for lowering operating overhead, but also for safety reasons. For example, the December 1988 Pan Am 103 Lockerbie, Scotland tragedy was a lesson well learned. The perpetrators of the bombing boarded the plane in Frankfurt and deplaned in London – their bags stayed on the plane and later exploded. In response, Section 109 of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act requires airlines to institute a “bag-match” programme to ensure that no checked baggage is placed aboard an aircraft unless the passenger who checked in the baggage is on board that aircraft.

CCTV

Digital CCTV are fast becoming the new standards at airports, replacing analog cameras as the dominant mode of surveillance. “All our CCTV cameras are digital and have the ability to analyse footage and use it for documentation or evidence purposes,” said Sarig.

“With IP-based surveillance, powerful video analytics software have true behaviour capabilities which are used to analyse the data, and alert airport security staff to unattended object, intruders in prohibited zones and other potential threats,” said Jimmy Leow, Business Development and Operations Director at TJ Systems.

Also, IP-based CCTV are highly scalable and reliable. “It’s easy to add IP cameras to the system. They just connect directly to the fibre network, so the customer is able to take advantage of higher resolution video capture without making any changes,” added Leow.

The Copenhagen airport in Scandinavia has recently deployed thermal imaging cameras from FLIR Systems, which enables an employee to monitor just as well at night as compared to the daytime.

“Monitoring and following objects with a camera is easy during daytime. But during night time we could not see anything with our daylight CCTV cameras. With the new thermal imaging cameras, clear images in the darkest areas can be produced and objects can be tracked effortlessly,” said Frank Christensen, Head of Department of the Copenhagen Airport Security Operations Centre.

“Being able to see in total darkness is great for security people. Especially in Scandinavia where there is not that much daylight during winter,” added Christensen.

IP surveillance has been around for several years but only recently has the technology successfully penetrated the airport security market, due mainly to newer compression formats which have solved most of the bandwidth problems. With digital CCTV equipped with intelligent video analytic software at security checkpoints, they can help capture and flag up any suspicious events, which helps solve the issue of human error.

One best solution?

Technology has evolved tremendously and clearly, body scanners will soon precede x-ray scanning as the dominant mode of security. The deployment of the more advanced passenger screening equipment will begin to replace outmoded X-ray technology that hasn’t changed significantly since the 1970s, Hawley at TSA said.

“It’s the wave of the future,” said James Schear, TSA Security Director at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. “The scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation’s 2000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. We are just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging,” said Schear.

In addition to blocking out the person’s face, the screening officers checking the images for possible weapons or contraband are located away from the security checkpoint and do not come into contact with passengers. Images also are deleted after viewing, officials said.

“The technologies have all been approved for use by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority. Actual radiation levels are very low. The dosage from one body scan is 400 times less than a single medical x-ray. It would take 10,000 scans to reach the maximum level of safe radiation recommended in a year,” said Retter.

However, technology is no magic bullet. “We need to acknowledge that we have over 60 million passengers going through screening points at our airports each year and mistakes do happen. The trick of course is to make sure that if there are any systemic weaknesses or problems that we address them,” said Retter.

To truly reap benefits from RFID, the IATA analysis of baggage mishandling showed that 80 airports would need to be equipped with RFID.

Andrew Price, Project Manager RFID at Iata, said that the global interoperability of RFID tags could be a challenge in airlines because they transmit on slightly different frequencies and can be read with varying sensitivity.

“That makes it difficult to homein on what exactly you’re reading. That’s the challenge in baggage handling,” he said.

According to Sarig, there is no-one-size-fits-all method. Each individual solution has to complement the other solutions, and should go hand-in-hand.

“CCTV is valuable but it is after all only part of the system. One system should overlap the other system. For example, CCTV would not help if you do not have fences, runways and so on. All technology functions as an accompaniment to each other so you cannot just focus on a single solution,” said Sarig.