MIA as Airport Security Role Model

Air Safety Week, August 13, 2007

When former Secretary Tom Ridge and other U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials sought a major U.S. airport as a national role model for state-of-the-art aviation access control and security they visited Miami International Airport (MIA).

Once there, Raynier Davalos, MIA's building systems support manager, demonstrated the monitoring and control of most system components in a laboratory built specially to test the newly-installed system. That was four years ago, but MIA is still cutting edge today and in the top five percentile of the nation's technologically advanced airports, according to federal officials.

The unique testing laboratory is one of the reasons. The testing facility is a working miniature replica of the entire security system at MIA, which had over 32 million passengers pass through in 2006. New components and upgrades are added to the system only after passing a real-life, compatibility-and- performance test in what MIA calls the "Integration Room."

This eliminates some "white elephant" equipment that other airports have gotten stuck with previously when it doesn't perform as advertised after installation.

"A lot of vendors say they can do this and that, so we say 'don't give us a PowerPoint presentation, but rather bring in your so-called wonder widget and prove it,'" said Davalos, an 18-year-airport security veteran. "Many airports have compatibility problems between vendors, so it's the Integration Room where things get worked out before we buy it."

The laboratory goes beyond new equipment testing, however. Many existing vendors have found the Integration Room invaluable for their own use in tweaking and refining their current Beta applications or products at the airport.

In addition to the test laboratory, it's the integration through applications protocol interface (API) of all security aspects--the access control, closed circuit television (CCTV), intercom, and live video-- where everything can be reviewed simultaneously from one PC workstation that adds to MIA's technology excellence.

"The synchronization allows the reviewing of an event's video, audio, access control record, and other functions all from one workstation with a couple of mouse clicks," said Davalos. "When an access point is breached, everything afterward is automatic and the access point's video comes on the screen.

An investigation in the late 1990s that uncovered an airline employee smuggling operation prompted the Federal Government to allocate funds to major U.S. airports for upgraded security to include video surveillance.

MIA used its Federal funding to research and execute the integrated system, which was very experimental at the time. Finished in 2003, MIA chose a distributed architecture system consisting of several rooms, versus a more conventional approach of a centralized location.

"This strategy gives us more diversity, redundancy and less risk than a centralized system," Davalos explained. "If one room fails--even though there are redundancies designed into that room--we lose only a very small part of our security rather than the whole facility."

What Miami International has done is integrate access control, intercom, CCTV, and live video into a 24/7, post-911 state-of-the-art airport-wide surveillance system.

MIA's access control system is manufactured by Matrix Systems (www.matrixsys.com), Dayton, OH, a 29-year-old security system provider. During the major security upgrade, Matrix System's Frontier software system was updated from the original Matrix legacy system installed in the early 1990s.

Matrix Systems custom designs the software to meet a specific customer's needs. They also manufacture the hardware, install the system, and provide 24/7 customer service.

The Matrix Systems upgrade created better workstations for security personnel. "The GUI (graphical user interface) allows a security workstation operator to put audio, video and pre-recorded video into separate windows all with one screen management tool and then have the ability to resize them and make the re-configuration as a preset command," explained Davalos.

Matrix Systems incorporated several airport-specific functions into the Frontier software that Davalos suggested, such as the door-extended, door-ajar feature. The door-ajar and other Davalos requests and designs have since been incorporated into the latest Frontier versions that Matrix Systems provides to other airports.

Complementary to the Matrix System is Omron Electronics software for programmable logic controllers (PLC) that allows MIA to change a door function quickly and integrate it into the entire security system. "We have the flexibility to change how a door works simply by changing a program," Davalos added. "If code requirements change, we upgrade the software on the PLC."

When the current expansion is completed, the security update will include more than 2,000 CCTV cameras for doors and other critical areas. Telindus provided its Cellstack line of high resolution digital video surveillance cameras and NICE installed the related audio/video recording gear. The other integrated system component is the intercom provided by EMCOM Systems.