Watching The Gates
Apr 1, 2006 12:00 PM
The US Navy's Atlantic Fleet consists of more than 118,000 Sailors and Marines, 186 ships and 1,300 aircraft. Additionally, there are 18 major shore stations providing training, maintenance and logistics support, as well as support to Navy and Marine Corps families.
Within the Atlantic Fleet is the Navy's Mid-Atlantic Region. Based in Norfolk, Va., it comprises the Norfolk Naval Station, the LANTFLT Station (where the Commander of the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet is located), Craney Island and the Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, all of which are located in Norfolk, Va., and the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va.
The Norfolk Naval Station is the homeport of 63 Navy ships, including guided missile cruisers, multi-purpose aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers and frigates, amphibious assault ships, transport docks and a variety of submarines.
The Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, the largest base of its kind in the world, is the major operating station for the amphibious forces of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The 2,120-acre-base provides support services to more than 15,000 personnel of the 27 home-ported ships and 78 resident and/or supported activities, as well as providing operational and training facilities that are geared predominantly to amphibious operations.
It is no wonder that vehicular traffic is heavy as so many personnel travel on and off the base, creating slowdowns as vehicles pass through secured gated lanes. This, along with the advanced technology and increased anti-terrorism/force protection requirements, resulted in the Chief of Naval Operations directing the U.S. Navy to implement an Integrated Gated Program to enable rapid automated access, and video verification of authorized vehicles and pedestrian traffic into U.S. Naval facilities.
The Navy selected Executive Technologies Corp. (ETC), North Charleston, S.C., to design and install a baseline gate system for the Mid-Atlantic Region in Norfolk that could be expanded if needed for all gate applications, as ETC was already supporting Naval Facilities Command (NAVFAC) at the Washington Navy Yard.
The proposed project required the integration of specific subsystems — closed circuit television (CCTV), license plate recognition and an integrated security management system (ISMS) — into a seamless integrated solution.
“We interfaced with designated government representatives, including Mid-Atlantic Region Norfolk Public Safety, NAVFAC, Region Police and the Resident Officer in Charge of Construction (ROIC) to establish the priority for the gates and develop a Project Action and Milestones (POA&M) for each gate project using a phased implementation,” says Randall Stubbs, president of ETC.
To provide the Navy with a local contact, ETC hired Eric Steinhoff, the president of Atlantic Protection Systems in Virginia Beach, Va., to assist ETC with the system design, work as the dedicated project manager and to act as the direct interface to the government in that area.
Creating the CCTV solution
Stubbs determined that a combination of Dedicated Micros' BX2 digital video recorders (DVRs) and Extreme CCTV's REG License Plate Recognition cameras would be able to accomplish license plate capture at the required speeds of up to 32 miles per hour.
“The Dedicated Micros BX2 uses embedded operating software for reliability to enable one hundred percent license plate recognition and storage at the required speeds,” Stubbs says.
To achieve the Statement Of Work requirements, it was critical that the DVR enable 12 frames per second (FPS) per camera, because video recording and archiving had to be used in conjunction with the specialized REG camera.
“Many manufacturers and integrators advertise 15, 30, 50 fps or higher,” Stubbs explains. “These are the DVR specifications; not the per channel/camera fps. A 16-camera DVR advertised at 50 fps has approximately a 3 fps per camera.”
The Dedicated Micros BX2 with 120 fps, a 640 GB hard drive and CD read-write drive for video archiving met the requirement, and ETC installed and integrated the units at each gate.
Gate requirements include environmentally sealed color CCTV cameras to provide video day and night using installed lighting at the gate.
ETC used Extreme CCTV's REG camera for the license plate recognition system.
Because all vehicles have rear license plates, but not all are equipped with front license plates, ETC installed the REG cameras to positively view the rear plates for every vehicle that enters through a designated gate.
The REG cameras were integrated with the DVRs, enabling real-time video assessment, digital recording and retrieval for each camera.
The Navy also wanted to be able to identify the make, model and color of every vehicle that enters and exits via the facilities' gates. ETC installed Pelco color, fixed cameras positioned to enable the identification.
Additionally, color pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) cameras allow base security/dispatch to monitor the overall gate area. They were installed at each gate and also integrated with the DVRs, which were installed locally at each gate. The associated U.S. Navy Mid-Atlantic Region Dispatch monitors and controls all cameras. The monitor, control and display equipment for the PTZ cameras uses a Pelco 6800 Matrix switch with control keyboard and joystick at the applicable dispatch location. The matrix switch enables dispatch personnel to select the camera for display and to control the PTZ positioning for each camera.
Security management system
The Navy required an option for vehicle entry card reader access through the gates. HID Corp.'s iClass Smart Card readers and barcode card readers were installed at 14 personnel turnstile locations. The card readers were integrated with the integrated security management system (ISMS) from Lenel Systems International Inc. The dual-technology electronic access cards enable personnel to use existing Common Access Cards (CAC) with the barcode readers while enabling them to use the next generation CAC for the 14443B proximity technology.
Extended card reader pedestals with CAC proximity card readers/keypads were installed at each pedestrian turnstile on three piers. The pedestals are equipped with an upper and lower level video intercom system from Aiphone, and they were integrated with the cameras and PTZ controls and the access card readers to the Lenel system.
Installation obstacles
Extensive coordination and planning were required to ensure that the system met the Navy's performance and functional standards, while minimizing the effects on daily traffic patterns at newly installed gates. Thus, significant lane construction was scheduled during evening and nighttime shifts when traffic flow was reduced.
“As each of these gates is the main entry point onto these bases, with thousands of cars entering through the gates, our schedule was always in a state of response,” Stubbs says. “But we anticipated that from the proposal phase. We worked at nights and on weekends, because the base could not just close a gate.”
Although the Navy is standardizing the gate project installation, along with its canopies, buildings and configuration, each gate is still constructed differently, requiring different physical configurations of cameras and equipment locations and cabling. Site requirements also vary, depending on the number of dedicated and reversible inbound and outbound lanes.
“Whenever you secure a perimeter, nothing is the same,” Stubbs says. “The overall configuration at each gate was the same, but the actual construction was different. We had to come up with some ‘design on the fly’ and configure multiple solutions for physical installations of the cameras, equipment and card pedestal installations.”
Working multiple locations
An Installation Design Plan (IDP) allowed preliminary tasks supporting the next gate to be started and the installation crew to move from the first to the second without waiting for start-up procedures.
The IDP defines what is to be installed, what parts and materials are required and how each portion of the system is to be integrated. It provides for optimum operational reliability, minimum vulnerability, minimum nuisance alarms and a high degree of flexibility and maintainability.
The installation of the system and components required extensive planning and tracking.
Once each installation was completed, ETC and government personnel tested individual equipment as well as overall integrated system testing to verify the operational and functional performance of the system.
ETC then conducted operator training for the designated government personnel to teach them to operate the system, monitor control and display functions and video retrieval and archiving.
Success reigns
The project has already seen some results, including an incident that reinforced the capabilities of the system as a whole.
“Bob Haney, the physical specialist at the NAS Oceana Physical Security Department, recently wrote us that they had very good usage out of their camera system,” Stubbs says. “They received an alert to be on the lookout for a truck with a specific description and license plate number that was going through truck inspection, then picking up probable foreign nationals and then proceeding through the main gate.” NAS Oceana's Physical Security Department was able to expeditiously review digital images from the canopy cameras, identify the truck's tag number and even identify the number of persons inside the truck. They burned the image to the DVR's internal CD and reviewed it in detail at their precinct. As it turns out, only the driver was in the vehicle when it passed through the gate, but the process was a good trial run for the staff.
The success of the project has driven the Navy to recommend the same gate installation solution for U.S. Navy Bases, Stubbs says.
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© 2010 Penton Media Inc.
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