Valencia Airport in Spain has become one of the latest airports to conform with new European Union (EU) Regulations (EC 300/2008) for perimeter intrusion to be in place by 2015. The installers Infoglobal and Ingloba Seguridad fitted Navtech Radar’s AdvanceGuard AGS1600 product, supplied by CCTV Center Spain S.L. – Navtech Radar’s distributor in Spain. The project was commissioned in May 2013.
At Valencia Airport, Project Manager for Equipment and Facilities in the Operations, Security and Services Directorate, Fernando Garcia Rodrigues, says: “We had a number of main issues we wanted to address with the new wide area surveillance solution. We needed to;
-Detect intrusions to the airport area.
– Follow intruders once inside the airport.
– Avoid expensive civil work – we had to cover a huge area but had no tube bank or any other canalisation available for cabling.
– Minimize communication and power costs.
– Have the same alarm rate and response in any weather or light conditions.
– Present a friendly and easy-to-use system for the operators.
“We heard about Navtech Radar’s AdvanceGuard Solution from Navtech’s distributor in Spain, CCTV Center S.L. We had also seen the solution showcased at SICUR – the International Security Safety and Fire Exhibition in Madrid. We asked Infoglobal and Ingloba Seguridad, the system integrators for this project, for Navtech’s references, in order to ensure that the solution would be in accordance with the new EU legislation which is affecting all airports: EC 300/2008. Before installing the new wide area surveillance solution we didn’t have any proper perimeter breach alarm detection at Valencia Airport. Now, we have a solution with a very low false alarm rate, we can distinguish between ‘friend’ and ‘intruder’ and in the latter case follow the intruder – which makes it much easier, and faster, to direct the intercepting security patrols.”
Valencia Airport has runway, access and navigation roads for aircraft and service vehicles, hangers and terminal buildings. The airport is handling about 4.8 million passengers a year (as of 2012) and tourism is an important part of the local economy. There is also agricultural aviation – the region’s oranges are famous and a revenue earner.
Keith Chapman, Head of Global Sales at Navtech Radar, adds: “Valencia Airport is a very good example of how Navtech Radar’s AdvanceGuard solution combined with the sophisticated backend software suite Witness, provides airports with very vigilant wide area surveillance. In this case, the radars also control PTZ cameras with embedded optical and thermal technologies. The cameras can further be controlled manually from the onsite control room. Using Sentinel, the intuitive on-screen interface offered by witness, users can draw detection zones, and change them as appropriate. At the simplest level, this can replace physical barriers with ‘virtual gates’ that allow unrestricted movement that enable users to monitor and, if necessary, change their status for tracks identified. With virtually no limit to the complexity of the rules that can be applied in Witness, a level of pseudo-intelligent monitoring can be introduced that closely mimics a human observer.”
Valencia adds that it has found it useful that their new surveillance system is able to discern between ‘friend’ and ‘intruder’ by their speed and direction. The airport has a service road close to the fence with hundreds of vehicles passing in the morning and afternoon, but not in the evening and night, and the system allows them to change the combination of settings for ‘friend’ and ‘intruder’ according to the timings in the servicing rota.
Navtech says that its product is able to cope with very adverse and challenging conditions. Wind, snow, rain, fog, or sand has it is claimed very little effect, and does not influence the product’s ability to detect any potential threats – in conditions where other technologies based on visual images would often fail, according to the firm. Testing of the Navtech systems was in March 2012 and the system was shown to meet specification and EU regulations. Installation and commissioning took place in November 2012 and formal sign-off took place at the end of the first quarter of 2013.
