Air terminals are no longer spaces where you simply take a flight, they are now large commercial infrastructures that demand a robust security scheme to guarantee total protection to their users.
By Juan Carlos George*
More than 245 million passengers circulated through Latin American airports1, an important figure if one thinks of all the efforts involved in keeping that number of users safe and away from any potential risk.
But in addition to the flow of visitors, which as we said is enough, it should be mentioned that air terminals have become commercial spaces where, in addition to cafes, magazine stands and souvenir shops, retail chains, restaurants and other services now converge. This forces the security strategy not only to focus on passengers, but on the goods and services offered at today's airports.
As if this cocktail were not enough, it is undeniable that the security situation in the region is challenging in itself. And it is that permanently the Latin American media report criminal situations that happen in local airports. For example, in February of last year, the Citizen Council of Mexico City reported that baggage theft at the air terminal of the Mexican capital increased by 25% during 2017.
Also in March of last year, Colombia's Attorney General's Office reported that it would initiate investigations to determine the extent to which officials at the El Dorado airport (Bogotá) were involved in the inclusion of drugs in luggage. In the same vein, in August 2017 they arrested a woman who had drugs on her body and who was trying to travel to Spain from the Jorge Chávez airport in Lima, the capital of Peru.
Faced with this scenario composed of so many variables, all of them so important, the only thing left for airports is to look for how to protect themselves and shield themselves against any criminal act. Public safety lies at the heart of airport operations, from check-in to the collection of taxis; that is why airports must adapt their security to face potential threats.
Simultaneously, terminals have seen how advances in software and integration systems have enabled uses that go far beyond security. And this is not only Latin American airports aware of. In fact, Terminal One of the John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York) relied on its security in an analogous surveillance system and an old IP system, both of which did not communicate with each other.
Obviously these two tools were inadequate and lacked the functionality that this terminal required, so much so that users could only watch video from different workstations, it was difficult to replace or add cameras and the system did not integrate easily with others. Migrating from this old analog system to an IP VMS platform was an important project. Due to the high security environment required by airports, the system and all its cameras had to continue operating throughout the migration.
How to solve this situation?
Taking into account that the demand of users in airports is constantly growing and that each time air terminals are growing and varying the services and goods they offer, it is very important to implement an open and expandable VMS platform, such as that offered by Milestone through its XProtect solution, allowing airports to enhance their security in different ways, such as:
Store management: As we mentioned earlier, airports are now also shopping centers that, given the variety of products and services they offer, pose challenges such as defining how to pass merchandise through customs and security controls. Because of the above, video systems can help businesses and retailers that are located at airports address this need through alerts, video incident verification, video integration with the systems that point-of-sale use to verify transactions, and overall surveillance to improve and improve overall operations.
Fraud in parking lots and driver management: Given the large size of airport parking lots, there are users who plagiarize the entrance ticket to pay less for the parking service. That is why the security teams of some terminals around the planet are working on reducing fraud and recovering lost assets, through the recording of vehicle license plates and their association with parking tickets.
Shared transportation verification: Given the overcrowding of ride-sharing services (such as Uber or Cabify) that have to pay a fee when they are at an airport, it is necessary to reach a special level of verification, since drivers claim to be in the terminals for personal reasons. To resolve the situation, airports are using video management systems and high-definition cameras on the sidewalks of the terminal, in order to obtain real-time images of license plates and people getting into vehicles. In addition, LPR (License Plate Recognition) video analytics, it is possible that sidewalk management systems can automatically request taxis when required and charge the fare for those transporters operating at the airport.
Baggage handling: Considering that thousands of suitcases are handled in an airport, video monitoring of the baggage service areas allows the operations divisions to be attentive to the personnel in charge of dispatching the suitcases. When there is a security anomaly with a baggage, the airport must guarantee access to the video to the airline and the terminal involved, so that the relevant authorities can monitor all the suitcases. The video system provides information to those involved so they can see what happened to the luggage and provide visual data to the emergency operations center, where staff can monitor the situation from their point of view.
Perimeter protection: Airports are adapters of technologies designed to detect and report anomalies in the process of handling people, vehicles and aircraft. An example of this is the use of Doppler radar detection systems, with which people or vehicles that are approaching the airport fence or suspicious items abandoned in the terminal or on nearby roads can be identified.
Mobile access: Currently managers should not be in the terminal to monitor events in the terminal. Now executives can access real-time video from their mobile devices, using solutions like Milestone Mobile. Thanks to this type of tools, it is possible for security and operations teams to have access to the video system from their tablets or cell phones to be able to monitor the airport. Technicians also use mobile access to solve problems or review and adjust the parameters and positioning of the cameras.
As can be seen, the needs of the different airports will continue to evolve and that is why it is necessary to migrate towards a philosophy more focused on operations and services, such as IT (information technologies). The cameras may look the same, but what they can achieve is defined by open platform software that will meet the future demands of air terminals, which will be framed in new ways of handling and adding information.
*Juan Carlos George is Milestone Systems' sales manager for Latin America.
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