Transportation vertical sets eyes on integrated and intelligent solution

Transportation holds the key to the development of a city, ranging from public transport such as buses, trams, metro, trains, airlines, to waterways infrastructures and even terminals for passengers and cargos. As far as most of the governments are concerned, transportation security is the utmost prior issue when it comes to providing a safe and secure environment for their citizens. However, transportation security is a rather broad concept, in terms of security systems deployments, there are more details that we need to look into.

For rail and metro, they usually require a set of comprehensive and centralized system that allows the authorities to make prompt and precise decision, control various systems simultaneously, and work collaboratively between multiple offices and departments at the same time when dealing with emergency or large-scale incident.

On the other hand, airway transportation usually faces with national security-level issues. “Airport security is one of the biggest challenges in modern times. They are extremely busy public places and, unfortunately, so are prime targets for terrorism and activism,” said Adlan Hussain, VP of Marketing at CNL Software. “If we look at security breaches at airports, we can see that it that the damage caused is very often at a national level and involves civilians from many nations.” In the airlines security, , more information needs to be integrated into a central management system – starting from passenger security, cargo and baggage, environmental systems, emergency management systems, to employees' management.

Different means of transportation may emphasize on different security needs and concerns; however, all of the demands are pointing at the same idea – intelligent and integrated system.

IP vs. Analog
In general, IP-based system is definitely leading the transportation applications, especially in the European and North American market. However, with advantages such as quality real-time monitoring without image delay at a relatively fair price, analog is still an ideal option for limited budgets and retrofit project. In fact, a considerably large demand on analog systems, like HDCVI, for transportation is seen in Asian countries, according to Terry Yuan, Product Director at Dahua.

Moreover, due to limited budget for retrofit project, requirement for both analog and IP systems, hybrid system, that can help the end users to seamlessly integrate their old equipment with new IP surveillance systems is trending, according to expert from EverFocus. “Often, transportation customers leverage government funding for security expansions or upgrades and budgets are restrained. Therefore, they may choose to utilize existing infrastructure while migrating to an IP system. As a manufacturer, it is important to be able to integrate with existing investments as closely as possible to help maximize older technology. When budget becomes available, IP cameras, for example, can easily replace older legacy technology,” said Ron Grinfeld, Director of Global Vertical Markets at DVTEL.

Purposes beyond Security
Sharing across departments creates added values
Video surveillance in the city has usually been used for multiple purposes across various departments. Other than transportation security, video surveillance system is served for operational and managing purposes such as monitoring traffic conditions. Furthermore, it also helps reduce false accusations of injury on the municipally owned transportation.

Therefore, it is crucial for the surveillance materials to be accessible by all related authorities. “The main requirement here is that any system used needs to provide a simple way of sharing video across many departments, without the need for custom applications or programs,” said Rob Hile, Director of Strategic Accounts at SureView Systems.

Advanced video surveillance solution
Transportation sector usually calls for a more integrated security solution that comes along with advanced intelligent function rather than pure surveillance monitoring system. For most of the transportation cases, the end users are dealing with an enormous area with numerous premises. Not only they have to make sure that the best service is provided, they have to keep hundreds or thousands of passengers safe and secure – only with integrated and intelligent surveillance systems they can effortlessly achieve this goal.

“Transportation entities are often geographically diverse, incorporating multiple facilities, open spaces, and large parking areas. Overall, security solutions for transportation markets need to ensure public safety, improve operational efficiency, and add global situational awareness for mission critical systems,” said Grinfeld. “More specifically, security needs to include crowd/queue monitoring and management in airports, mobile systems for buses, track security for train and subway stations, and loading dock security at seaports,” Grinfeld continued.

*Business efficiency
Moreover, effectively integrating business systems with video surveillance may create exponential business efficiency and added values. A video surveillance system is usually considered a cost of safety and security; however, with fine integration with business systems such as train ticketing systems and Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS), the security systems will become more valuable. “With video, you can verify who is using an access credential, such as a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, at various secure entry points. You can verify if ticketing kiosks are operating properly before dispatching service. You can overlay FIDS data over video recording at each individual gate to increase the service levels of the aircraft and make it simple to identify gate activity with associated flights, which then creates further business efficiency,” explained Joshua Phillips, Director of Product Marketing for Video & Situation Intelligence Solutions at Verint Systems.

*Enhance situational awareness: management efficiency and intelligent analysis
In order to enhance situational awareness, help the users to be capable of making proactive response to threats, and optimize staff, it is necessary to adopt advanced video surveillance solutions – video management software, high-resolution image quality, and video analysis are the most common and basic requirements. It is even better to be able to seamlessly incorporate security devices with operational systems, boosting efficiency for management purposes. “The ability to coordinate response personnel is key to minimizing the impact of incidents and also increases the perception of security,” highlighted Patrik Anderson, Director of Business Development in Transportation at Axis Communications.

IP-based systems inevitably, have been playing a crucial role in terms of security and incident management in the transportation sector due to surging requirement on intelligent analysis functions such as loitering detection, facial recognition, and crowd management. “By carefully applying intelligent video where cameras analyze the video, security operators will also benefit from an additional detection mechanism to detect incidents early and thereby increasing their ability to respond to an incident successfully before it escalates out of control,” said Anderson.

“With the intelligent analysis technology evolvement, the adoption of the intelligent function on camera is on the rise since the security and operation efficiency can be significantly enhanced,” said Steve Ma, Executive Vice President of VIVOTEK. “VIVOTEK has developed VADP (VIVOTEK Application development Platform), an open platform for integrating video analytic functionality within its cameras. With VADP, line crossing detection can be directly installed in VIVOTEK cameras. Users can pre-set several lines for detecting object crossing. This intelligent function is especially ideal for monitoring platforms in train stations or metro stations, enabling police or security staff to take actions proactively before any damage or tragedy occurs,” Ma continued.