No High-Wire Act
by Sean Broderick

[ Wireless technology is putting high-quality, versatile access control and surveillance systems within economic reach of smaller airports. ]

Rod Probst considers Fullerton Municipal Airport, which he manages, to be a community-friendly facility that, more importantly, caters well to those that both use and rely on the 86-acre airfield.

Like most U.S. airports, Fullerton's daily routines have been necessarily altered by recent events. The changes have made Orange County, California's last general aviation airfield - parts of it, at least - less accessible to the would-be plane admirer. And the neighborhood gentleman who regularly capitalized on the runway's smooth, flat surface for bike rides has been forced to get his exercise somewhere beyond the airport's perimeter fence.

Unlike most airports, however, Fullerton's turning point did not start in the weeks after September 11, 2001, when most of the rest of the industry was confronted with the reality that aviation security standards were simply not robust enough to deal with the new world order. Rather, Fullerton's time of reckoning was a 90-day window in the summer of 1999, when four aircraft were stolen from the facility, never to be seen again by anyone looking for them.

"We had three (Cessna) 172s and a 152 stolen," Probst recalled, noting with tongue-in-cheek pride that his facility "led the nation" by accounting for 25 percent of the GA aircraft reported stolen that year. "We were a nice GA airport with a homey feel to it - four-foot fences all around and gates that only served to keep honest. We were so naive."

His lesson learned, Probst moved quickly to apply his new knowledge. When the thieves hit, Probst happened to have an Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grant in the works for improved fencing and lighting. After the 90-day spree, however, he knew that "we needed to go farther." So he expanded his security-upgrade wish list to include wireless digital cameras with a three-week archiving system and a state-of-the-art wireless access control system for his eight vehicle gates.

Fullerton issued an request for qualifications (RFQ) in late 1999 for the system. He got bids back ranging from $90,000 to half a million dollars. After interviewing three companies selling themselves as technology integrators, Probst chose a local vendor, UltraSafe Security Solutions of Norco, California. Two years later, Probst has his cameras and enough on-field lighting to seemingly turn night into day. The access control system is eyed as a 2003 expenditure. Add in a beefed-up police presence thanks to a newly established, on-airport police barracks (Probst gave the police some office space and a computer, which the officers use regularly, he reported, especially at night), and Probst reckons that his airport now boasts as complete a security web as any GA facility in the country. "Having participated in the GA Security Task Force, Fullerton is what I would consider the benchmark standard for GA airports," he said.

If the GA community has its way, security standards for its facilities being mulled by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would include several of the features adopted at Fullerton. Last summer, a task force comprised of key GA industry executives and local airport officials, including Probst, put together a list of recommendations for upgrading GA security and sent it to then-TSA boss John Magaw. Among the suggestions was creating airport-specific security plans that include upgrading lights and fencing, as well as installing access control procedures for both people and vehicles.

Among the recommended enhancements, access control is expected to be one of the hottest topics of interest. As Airport Magazine went to press, TSA was close to picking which airports would participate in an access control pilot program from the 90 or so that expressed interest in taking part. Already, however, there's good news on how some of the newest of these systems are performing. Early returns from several facilities suggest that advancements in access control technology are resulting in affordable systems that will do the myriad of jobs required at airports large and small.

One company, Brivo Systems, seems to be establishing an early beachhead in the small airport access control market. UltraSafe, the integrator at Fullerton, has used Brivo for security enhancement jobs at two other California airports, Redlands Municipal and Santa Monica. Virginia's Manassas Regional Airport, working with Fairfax, Virginia-based security specialists Orion Systems Group, is field-testing Brivo's system on its fuel farm, while ADT has packaged Brivo's system as part of a project for an unidentified airport in Maryland.

Brivo's system, built around control panels that connect to card and biometric readers, offers several features that eliminate hurdles of many traditional access control systems. The system is wireless, meaning facilities aren't faced with the huge costs that come with digging trenches and interrupting airfield activities during construction. The only wiring needed is between the control panel and the nearby reader. It is networked, allowing multiple sites (such as access gates) to be managed from one central location (say, the airport manager's office). Finally, the Brivo service is entirely Web-based and can be managed from any Web-enabled computer, anywhere.

The implications of such features are huge. The most noticeable advantage: There's no need to add extra computers to run the system. This, said Santa Monica Airport Manager Bob Trimborn, was a huge selling point to him. "This system provides us a lot of flexibility in how we operate it without having to have a lot of hardware in our offices," he said. "It's easy to program and reprogram gates, and there's no hard-wiring to do."

The cost is also not overly prohibitive. Because integrators often re-sell the products as part of larger, turn-key packages, system prices vary. Ballpark figures for the Brivo system are about $2,000 to equip a single gate or door with an access panel and reader. Depending on the airport's configuration, one panel can control up to four gates/doors. A monthly, per-panel "network access" fee, usually less than $100, keeps each one tied into Brivo's data network.

The eight access gates on Santa Monica's 227-acre facility are equipped with stand-alone, punch-code systems. Enter the correct code; the gate opens. By spring, Trimborn plans to have Brivo systems installed on the gates. "We're just responding to the need for increased security," he explained. "The punch-code access system stays about as secure as water in a sieve," since recently changed codes are quickly and easily relayed from person to person. Even though the code-sharing is usually in the name of convenience rather than illicit activity, the mere fact that penetrating the system is that easy was no longer an acceptable risk. "The system needed to be upgraded," Trimborn said.

Like Fullerton, Redlands moved to tighten security long before September 2001. And, like Fullerton, thievery was the motivation. A rash of avionics thefts prompted city officials, including assistant public works director/airport manager Tom Fujiwara, to seek quick, affordable, effective methods for securing the 180-acre facility. With projects at Fullerton and Corona - which has wireless cameras - in full swing, Ultra-safe soon added Redlands to its GA airport client list.

Pre-Ultrasafe, vehicle access to hangars and other restricted areas at Redlands was controlled by fencing and two access gates with card readers. Several unmonitored pedestrian gates also offered easy access to the airfield and its facilities. Installing an access control system and wireless cameras presented several challenges for Redlands officials. The airport sits on a former rock quarry, making trenching out of the question. "To run wire would have required at least one mile of trenching through solid rock and across operational areas, which would mean shutting down some operations temporarily," Ultrasafe President Ron Lander explained.

At Redlands, Ultrasafe hooked up more than a dozen cameras - some on poles, others on buildings - at key locations around the airport. The cameras, supplied by San Diego's Trango Systems, run 24 hours a day. Infrared lights provide enough illumination to capture video at night in areas without artificial lighting.

Redlands officials also wanted video feeds to go live to the local police and the public works department offices - six miles away. Using a 2.4 Ghz and 5.8 Ghz video link system, the images are converted to wireless and then re-converted for reception by the digital video recorders. A wireless TCP/IP link, or data bridge, gets the images to the police station but doesn't require use of a network line and the monthly charge that goes with one.

Installing cameras triggered by motion detectors at each gate is the next step in Trimborn's plan for Santa Monica. All of the equipment will be wireless. "We have one gate that is a mile from the office," he explained. "Trenching and setting the wires in would be far too expensive." The ability to network far-flung gates without the major costs and headaches of trenching appealed to Manassas airport officials as well, said David Taylor, the Orion Systems Group CEO. Orion recently installed a Brivo system on the main gate of the airport's fuel farm, which sits across the main access road from the rest of the 850-acre facility.

The Brivo system includes a combination PIN/access card reader in front of the fuel farm gate. "Either method registers that user as accessing the facility," explained Taylor. "If a person attempts to guess a PIN code by randomly hitting numbers, a tampering alarm is registered by the system and can be sent to security pagers or mobile phones."

The system - installed in about six hours - replaced a year-old proximity-card access system that wasn't linked to any of the other gates at the airport or to a central monitoring facility. As a result, said Taylor, airport officials "weren't getting information about who was coming and going through the fuel farm gate unless they harvested the data from the card reader." Other problems, such as gates being left open, weren't easily detectable, either.

The new system's ability to immediately register all activities - from routine accesses to failed attempts - and display them on everything from the Web interface to text-enabled cell phones and pagers means that the airport manager's eyes and ears are never more than a few seconds away from knowing exactly what's happening at the gate.

Manassas airport officials will evaluate the new system with an eye toward applying the technology to the rest of the facility. If they do, the project promises to be a solid test for the versatility of wireless systems. Manassas boasts about 130,000 operations per year, making it the busiest GA airport in Virginia. Its layout - a terminal and fixed-based operators on one side of the airfield, an air traffic control tower and large general aviation facility on the other, and two parallel runways in between - means lots of pedestrian and vehicle gates spread out over great distances.

The Manassas installation quickly generated considerable local interest - and one convert. Represen-tatives from Manassas fixed-base operator Jet Services attended a demonstration of the Brivo system and were so impressed that they immediately tapped Orion to hook up its apron access door. In addition, Taylor said, GA airports from nearby Culpeper and as far away as Richmond have expressed interest in going wireless with their access control systems.

Clusters of interest like those in Virginia and California give rise to another intriguing possibility that a wireless, database-driven access control system offers: seamless inter-network integration. "If a system like this became adopted on a national scale, you could have a single database of people that have access to secure areas on airports," Santa Monica's Trimborn pointed out. "With all airports hooked up to the same technology, you could do background checks instantaneously at not very great a cost."

Such a set-up would include a database held at an independent, third-party locale that could be made available to federal agencies as part of security upgrade efforts, Trimborn suggested. On a regional level, vendors and others that need access to multiple airports could have one card programmed to work at multiple facilities, because each facility would, in fact, be hooked into one giant network.

Even if the uber-network doesn't come to fruition, individual airports seem to have much to gain from the technology. The ability to control gates remotely and monitor them both visually through cameras and digitally through a wireless access control network - all without digging a single trench or delaying one flight - means that airports don't have to choose between tight security and tight budgets. "Airports have really been waiting for a product like this," said Orion's Taylor. "It can't be done any other way."

 

(This story appeared in the January/February 2003 issue.)