Success Story: Holistic Security Management in Airport

Airports, and other critical infrastructures such as ports and transportation facilities, must be prepared for natural disasters, terrorism, civil disobedience, employee violence, systems failures, cyber-attacks, and other forms of human interference due to their location, geography, and criticality.

The measures taken to support the security are crucial for the normal and uninterrupted operation of such infrastructures.

Missionware was contracted to design and implement an Integrated Security Command & Control System that would support the security operations of a large airport.

Managing the security of a large area, and even more of a critical infrastructure that expands at a large area, or spans across multiple areas, is totally different than securing a building or a facility of limited size. The monitoring and operation of the various subsystems that compose a critical infrastructure protection system can be a nightmare for the operators:

“We need a system so, my operators would EASILY deal with all those thousands of signals/points and hundreds of quite similar field of views of cameras. They should NOT be experts with all the various technical details and fault alarms. They have to continuously have situational awareness, acquire an operational view of the reaction forces and support their operations (instead of just calling the police), but they should NOT have to continuously spend tremendous effort to provide the level of security required for our site…” as the Airport Security Manager said.

All together, as the requirements for such a mission critical system, are well beyond of what an ordinary Off-The-Self security product can provide, there was a pressing need for the implementation of a solution that can easily and quickly adapt to such extremely demanding operational requirements.

Missionware, built and successfully delivered an instance of IS2AWARE, an advanced Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) system that is based on our innovative platforms ODOS and EORON, so as to provide adaptability to these requirements.

IS2AWARE was designed to meet and exceed those operational requirements and not the opposite – to adapt the operations to what a system could offer.

To achieve site and system wise situation awareness, as well as reaction and coordination capabilities, IS2AWARE was built with some key characteristics:

• Centralized operations management
• Support for multiple Command Centers
• Complete integration of all security components in a system of systems.
• Complete monitoring of supporting infrastructures health status (i.e. IT, COMS, Power)
• Common Operating Picture of all signals and alarms using intuitive visualizations
• Use of GIS tools, maps and georeferenced resources to support operator orientation, quick perception of the visualizations and spatial-aware decision making and commanding
• Collaborative tools to support user friendly Control Center operations
• Support for field operations of reaction forces, human intelligence and offline system usage
• Ability to support additional functions such as safety or core business operations
• Open architecture and adaptability to operational requirements

Nowadays even though, there is a plethora of sensors and high-tech security components that perform great and can give added value to any security system, the full exploitation of such components is not easily achieved. Normally, the system architecture of such large systems is a collage of separate subsystems and data silos.

IS2AWARE is able to take the most out of any security component even the most complicated ones such as Radars and Video Analytics. Specifically, in this project, a large number of the following components were integrated to the system:

• Thermal and Day/Night PTZ Cameras
• Video Management System
• Video Analytics System
• Ground Surveillance Radars
• Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems
• Burglar Alarm Systems
• Access Control Systems for Buildings and Gates
• Building Management System
• ITC device monitoring
• Power Supply Monitoring

IS2AWARE provides advanced information perception and intuitive usage by fusing statuses and alarms, grouping detection zones, presenting a plethora of spatial aware information in multilayered maps while providing homogenous visualizations and commands to the operators.

Additionally, IS2AWARE has extensive Command & Control features to support the Reaction Forces (RF) operations.

The Control Center can follow the RF members location in the collaborative georeferenced map alongside other information, such as intruder tracks from radar or video analytics, alarms from building or fence intrusion detection sensors, assets location, events represented with markers.

IS2AWARE also provides IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) capabilities and incorporates human intelligence from field operators. It is also able to exchange structured commands and track their execution.  

Among IS2AWARE major concepts, is that any maintenance event should first be treated as a potential security event, therefore should be streamlined in overall alert management. That is why the health of ALL security components as well as their supporting infrastructures are continuously monitored, and any failure or system change triggers an alarm both for the operational personnel and the maintenance team (so they can open an issue or work order – if necessary).

Apart from that, as it is identified that the level of security provided by a system is directly related to minimal downtime of its components, IS2AWARE also provides extensive functionality for fast troubleshooting of system failures as well as integrated support for system configuration management and maintenance activities.