An airport in the Czech Republic has become the latest to conform to the new European Union (EU) regulations, which stipulate that improved perimeter security measures must be in place by 2015. Working with a firms based out of Brno, including ADI Global Distribution (Honeywell Security Products), Techniserv IT, and Security Technologies, the airport has in place AdvanceGuard wide area surveillance from Navtech Radar.
Ben Ash, Key Account Manager for ADI & Honeywell at Navtech Radar, says: “At a glance, Ostrava looks as if it would be a relatively easy site to cover with a radar based security solution. However, the reality is that the ground clutter conditions are less than ideal. Long grass, airport signage, and even the perimeter fence itself, all contrive to reduce the effective radar range and mask intruders. The AdvanceGuard AGS1600 radar overcomes these issues through its high sampling resolution in both azimuth (0.5 degree) and range (30 cm). The AGS1600 will detect a walking person as far away as 1 km, which gives the onsite security staff plenty of advance warning of people, cars and other objects moving both inside and outside the fence.”
Petr Voráč, Head of Security for Ostrava Airport, says: “We first discovered AdvanceGuard via Navtech Radar’s web site and were invited to demonstrations of a number of existing Navtech installations. Navtech Radar’s local distributor, ADI Global Distribution, then undertook a site survey to confirm the system design comprising four AdvanceGuard AGS1600 radars. Compared to other radar-based systems using just one long range radar unit, the Navtech solution coped with the irregular shape of the airfield. One large unit would have given us problems with ‘dead zones’ where there would have been no detection due to ground slopes and non-linear fence lines. By using four radar heads, the Navtech solution minimises dead zones.”
The AdvanceGuard AGS1600 is tied in to Navtech Radar’s physical security information management (PSIM) system – Witness. The PSIM manages it all; from analysing movement to create target ‘tracks’ and controlling cameras to follow them, to handling the algorithms in the security rule engine which analyses target behaviour, assigns threat levels and allow security staff to define alarm zones and the rules that trigger them. Witness includes Sentinel, an intuitive on-screen security interface. That allows users to draw or revise alarm zones and their associated rules. At the simplest level, it can replace physical barriers using ‘virtual fences or access points’ which alarm when objects enter them, travel in the wrong direction within them, or pass through out of hours.
Ostrava airport expects to be an early adopter of Witness version 3, which will be released in Q1 2014. Witness 3 includes a number of new features such as advanced user management and track hand-over, which allows multiple radars to transfer a track between each other,. The airport also expects to utilise Witness’ proprietary XML feed, which will aid the import of real-time track movement information into their PSIM.
