Ashley Wyton of Flir says: “Security operatives won’t necessarily see the point in getting up out of their chair to a number of false alarms – more than likely they will just turn the thing off – its human nature. You can spend $3m on port security, but it is only going to be as useful as the person at the end of the viewing screen.”
Whereas technology is often ‘so-called’ intelligent, it really isn’t, relying on algorhythms to mimic a kind of choosing behaviour. Robots that can think for themselves are still a long, long way away. But people – the ultimate generalists – are internally wired in all sorts of ways to ‘power down’.
So, anything that stops a person just sitting and looking at a bank of screens all night long is going to win. However, it is not always the obvious response that makes the best sense. Some airports noted just this tendency – and decided since customs procedures are often ‘rote’ with officers tending to become less alert over time, they would keep them on their toes with security systems programmed to drop in a random false alarm: a tracker follows the hits and misses to give a value to the team’s success rate.
However, new technology is changing the game. Software analytics means CCTV images can be decoded, allowing the system to ‘recognise’ certain shapes – distinguishing a figure from other input.
These analytics programmes can be paired with night vision cameras which can detect a huge range of heat signatures, giving a clear image even in rain, snow and low light levels and identifying intruders with a great degree of accuracy. So, with a more accurate alarm, there’s much more chance the security operatives will trust it.
While thermal technology is more expensive per camera, it’s become much less costly over time, and you need fewer units, explains Mr Wyton: this also means there’s fewer poles, less concrete, and much less maintenance, he adds.
“If you take a site with roughly 4,000 metres of fence line you’d need over 150 standard cameras – complicated by the fact that these rely on a clear line of sight. With thermal cameras, you can reduce this number to 25 as it’s perfectly possible for cameras to recognise a human being – even as far away as 20km.”
Further, you simply don’t need the illumination, so bills can usually be reduced as lighting can be triggered on demand.
Generally, surveillance systems toward the marine sea have to rely on radar and VTS systems, but because thermal images don’t need a light source, they can be turned toward the sea as well as landside. Mr Wyton points to the port of Calais, where one of the specifications was that the cameras needed to be able to detect persons at large distances even in the water.
