Intelligent and highly integrated "smart airport" new development trend

    The hot keywords in the security industry in 2013 are "high-definition, intelligent, and integrated". As the fastest way to travel, airport security systems do not blindly pursue high-tech, but focus on efficient and intelligent applications. Driven by the concept of "smart airports", airport security construction will also usher in a new round of development opportunities.

    近年来，随着经济的不断深入发展，人民生活水平显著提高，乘坐飞机商务出行、旅游的人数屡创新高，使得机场的客流不断增加。民航“十二五”规划提出，到2015年底，中国新建机场将达70座，改扩建机场101座。业内人士表示，仅2013年全国将新建成10个机场，预计2013年年底全国民用运输机场数量将达到193个。

    As the number of domestic civil aviation airport projects such as new construction, relocation and expansion increases sharply, they also need to be equipped with corresponding security systems to meet the safety management requirements of civil aviation airports and the rapid development of airport operations. At the same time, with the continuous occurrence of terrorist incidents at home and abroad, traditional airport security has been severely tested, which actually brings opportunities for the construction, upgrading and transformation of airport security systems.

    In response to the call of the national smart city policy, "smart airports" are increasingly mentioned. So what is a smart airport? There is no unified definition at present. Industry insiders pointed out that unlike ordinary smart buildings, it is equivalent to a smart management system. Smart airports should be at a higher level. From the perspective of the Internet of Things, they should cover personnel, vehicles, security systems, parking management, terminal services, etc.

   Ren Weidong, deputy chief engineer of the North China Branch of China Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group Corporation, said that smart airports cover too much, including terminal buildings, isolation areas, staff and equipment in the flight area, etc. What we can do now is only one node, such as energy saving. However, there is probably no clear standard for what level of achievement can be called a smart airport.

    Smart airports, smart cities, smart police, and smart ports are all in the conceptual stage. The key is to have demand pull and technical support, otherwise it may be new wine in old bottles, replacing old things with a new concept.

It will take time for new technologies to become popular

    If 2010 is the "first year of HD", the "year of HD" for airports has not really arrived. Airports are large in scale, with a large flow of people and a wide area. The airport terminal and check-in area are relatively large areas. If cameras are installed in each area, the number will be large. Especially in the HD era, the cost of back-end storage will be very high. If front-end fast ball cameras are used, there will be blind spots in the coverage area. Therefore, airports will not use all HD cameras. Ren Weidong of the North China Branch of China Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group Corporation believes: "As for airport security, all monitoring systems and alarm systems can only play a role in discovering problems. People are the real problem solvers, and the key is how the security system can provide accurate information."

    Panoramic cameras can monitor a relatively large area. One camera can manage more areas. For example, a 360-degree area or plane can capture the behavior of people. At the same time, fixed cameras are installed in areas where faces need to be seen clearly to capture facial images in high definition. Through the management of this system, events and people can be integrated, rather than ensuring that every camera can see faces clearly.

   It is understood that the airport coverage rate of major cities is already very high. Currently, new airports are mainly concentrated in second- and third-tier cities or western cities, where the investment budget is relatively small. On the other hand, although airports are positioned as high-end application industries by the outside world, according to surveys, 70% of the nearly 180 airports currently in operation in my country are losing money. Industry insiders said that my country's airport security will not blindly pursue high-precision technology, but will comprehensively consider stability and investment costs, and install high-definition systems at key points such as some points in the terminal building.

    Currently, IP cameras have begun to sweep the entire security industry, but it is understood that the degree of adoption of digital systems by various airports varies, mainly determined by the scale of the airport's construction. Due to the cost and difficulty of reconstruction, old airports still rely more on analog products. Ren Weidong of the North China Branch of China Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group Corporation believes: "If all these systems are replaced with digital systems when renovating or expanding airports, it will be a waste of original resources. Most of the newly built airports currently use digital video surveillance systems to avoid the waste of analog systems in the future."

    In addition, thermal imaging technology is also a technology worth paying attention to. Since lights can affect aircraft navigation, no lights are allowed in the airport flight area at night, and aircraft use special navigation lights to navigate. In this case, if there is no thermal imaging camera, the entire outdoor area is a blind spot for security guards (there may be lights near the terminal, but the area far from the terminal fence is a blind spot). Therefore, thermal imaging technology is a development trend, which can solve the problem of night surveillance.

    Thermal imaging cameras are also used in some areas to identify people with high temperatures and to respond as an alarm measure to prevent influenza.

Intelligent construction improves management efficiency

    Intelligent management also plays a pivotal role in airport security. It can timely detect abnormal behaviors inside and around the airport and automatically alarm, thereby improving the work efficiency of supervisory staff, reducing workload, improving monitoring accuracy, and making airport management more effective. It will surely become a major development trend of airport security applications in the future. The intelligent emergency command and dispatch system can improve the airport's emergency event handling capabilities, better conduct on-site command, handling, personnel diversion, and guidance, etc., to ensure the safety of terminals, flight areas, and personnel. Through intelligent analysis, video recording can be structured and real-time alarm linkage functions can be realized, and passive monitoring can be changed to active monitoring. For example, the length of the queue in an area can be set according to the back-end platform. If the queue is too long, the demand can be set to generate alarm information to prompt airport management personnel.

    "Intelligence" is to turn the information we store into something valuable. It is not a simple record, nor does it require manual analysis. For the system, through this information such as logs and videos, it can discover potential safety hazards and provide some advance arrangements or preventive measures in security management. Intelligence can play a big role in behavioral analysis and airport passenger flow management through some data information, not just security.

    Take video analysis as an example. In fact, it still relies on manpower, and technical defense in airports can only be said to be relatively crude. Most of them use wide-area video analysis technology for analysis, which is specifically for large outdoor spaces. This system is widely used in airports abroad, but not many in China. Intelligence is an inevitable trend in the construction of airport security systems. With the construction and renovation of airports across the country, many airports have begun to improve and apply the intelligence of security systems, and have achieved certain results. For example, the intelligent analysis of the area of ​​interest of Kunming Airport video and the intelligent analysis of parking spaces in the parking lot of Shenzhen T3 Terminal, etc. However, whether in terms of application breadth or depth, the application of intelligence in airport security systems is still relatively small, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

    According to industry insiders, major domestic airports such as Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and Shenzhen Baoan Airport have tried to apply video analysis, but the results are not ideal, so airports are basically in a wait-and-see attitude towards video analysis technology. Video analysis needs to select the right application and start with maturity and reliability to make a difference.

To be “smart”, integration must come first

    Smart airports are about realizing highly integrated applications of technology in the airport field. Airports collect a large amount of information through various systems. After centralized analysis and processing in the background, the airport's operation efficiency can be higher, and passengers can enjoy safer, more comfortable and considerate services with lower energy consumption. From the perspective of security, we used to rely too much on human energy. In the future, we will minimize the human factor and use technical means to protect the airport.

    It is understood that in larger projects, video surveillance, alarm systems, access control, perimeter products, etc. rarely use the same brand. They are often built and operated independently, which makes their application and use more complicated, and the management and maintenance costs are high. In order to meet the needs of operation and management, it is often necessary to integrate these subsystems into a platform for unified management. Ren Weidong of the North China Branch of the Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group Corporation of China said: "We use different methods to integrate all manufacturers' products together. When they are truly centralized in the central control room, these physical alarms are reflected and the video screen is switched in real time for personnel to judge. From the perspective of linkage, this can basically be achieved."

    A higher level of integration is the integration of the security subsystem and the civil aviation information business system, including the security inspection system, berth guidance system, geographic information system, flight management system, parking management system, baggage sorting system, patrol system and public broadcasting system. This platform is not just for integration, but needs to be given many functions. For example, emergency command, once an emergency occurs, how to dispatch, how to generate a plan, emergency command is currently rare in airports, but our current owners are paying more and more attention to it. However, emergency command is still relatively lacking, and many airports are still blank.

    According to reports, a common problem with the security systems of most airports in my country is that they are built too much for the sake of construction, and fail to integrate the security systems into the production system, which means that they cannot really serve or assist the production of the airport. The civil aviation information business system belongs to different departments. It is understood that the management of civil aviation under the current system is divided into four parts: except for the Capital Airport and the airport in Tibet, the rest of the airports in the country are managed by local governments; airlines are managed by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission; air traffic control is managed by the Civil Aviation Administration; and public security is managed by the Ministry of Public Security. Departments operate separately and cannot share information.

    On the other hand, although the "Civil Aviation Airport Management Regulations" promulgated by the State Council clearly stipulates that airports are public service infrastructure, it has not been implemented so far. In addition, the local government's assessment indicator for airports is profitability, which has greatly affected the airport's capital investment and the degree of attention it pays to the security system itself.

    In comparison, the management model of foreign airports is much more advanced. In foreign countries such as the United States, airport security and some command and dispatch can be linked, and some functions are combined together. In addition, security personnel and command and dispatch functions are placed in the security control room, and its personnel quality requirements are very high. Moreover, foreign countries will invest a lot of money in security systems, build a very large command and dispatch platform, and integrate all regional subsystems into it. This is the future development direction of our country.

Relying on the Internet of Things to help airports become smarter

    According to relevant information, smart airports include various links such as information perception, transmission, and processing. Various information collection systems covering the entire airport terminal, airside, landside and other areas must be established, among which Internet of Things technology will play an important role.

    Airport application management mainly manages passenger flow and logistics. The Internet of Things is still very helpful for the airport's capacity management and the airport's own operations. Relatively speaking, the development of the Internet of Things in airports may provide a basic platform, and for some logistics companies, it will also involve the specialization and compatibility of the platform.

    In the future, relying on the construction of the Internet of Things, airports will have many niches for development. Liu Guohua of Hikvision concluded: "The application of Internet of Things technology in airports covers a wide range. For example, video perception technology can achieve all-around monitoring of airports, face recognition, behavior and event analysis in areas of interest, and quick parking and finding of cars in parking lots; one-card system can achieve automatic and quick transfer between subways and buses; lighting systems, based on Internet of Things perception applications, can automatically adjust the brightness of lights according to the airport environment, and automatically turn on lighting equipment during emergency command linkage, which can not only save energy but also ensure good lighting effects; ETC non-stop toll collection system improves the efficiency of airport highway traffic, etc. These are all niches for development and are also the development directions that companies should pay attention to."

    With the continuous improvement of integration and intelligence, airports are expected to achieve integrated management under a unified platform. Although most airports are currently stuck in green environmental protection and energy conservation, such as using solar lighting and virtualization technology to save computer room space and reduce energy consumption, there has been no substantial promotion, but in the view of Liu Guohua of Hikvision, "smart airport" will be the future development direction of airports.

    To truly realize intelligence, it is necessary to use the cloud on a large scale. After the popularization of cloud technology, problems can be solved by connecting to the cloud backend and solving them through services rather than through actual solutions. Let us wait and see where airport security will go in the future!

    The key to a smart airport is to have demand pull and technical support, otherwise it may be like putting new wine in old bottles, replacing old things with a new concept.