Page 12 - Security Today, February 2017

INDUSTRY
VERTICAL
Terminal Upgrade JTFK Airport improves functionality and image quality
With Courtney Pedersen
erminal One at JFK Inter- national Airport had relied on a limited analog surveil- lance system and a separate, older IP system that were
independent of each other. Both were in- adequate and lacked the functionality that Terminal One needed. Users could only view video from specific workstations, it was difficult to replace or add cameras, and the system did not integrate easily with other systems.
Migrating the terminal’s old analog sys- tem to an advanced IP VMS platform was no small feat. Due to the airport’s high-se- curity environment, the system and all of its cameras had to remain operational around the clock throughout the migration.
To design and implement a new solu- tion, security integrator Media Wire, LLC, designed and implemented a Milestone XProtect Corporate VMS system to man- age 500 to 600 cameras, including the in- stallation of 160 new cameras from Axis Communications. The Milestone Mobile client is used by air terminal managers to view video on their mobile devices. The VMS can be integrated with Honeywell’s Pro-Watch access control system so all alarms and door information can be ac- cessed from one centralized system. Addi- tionally, the advanced VMS integrates with the video from the NVRs used by the ter- minal’s restaurants and vendors, enabling broader coverage of the terminal.
Necessary Upgrades
The VMS provides a significant upgrade to the terminal’s analog system and greatly enhanced the ability to monitor and ef- ficiently respond to incidents. The sys- tem’s search capabilities help operators to quickly find and identify camera views, for example by grouped areas such as Gate 10. It provides users with the flexibility to view any of the nearly 600 cameras from any workstation throughout the airport, or from their mobile devices when on-the-go.
Greater video coverage means the ter- minal can be protected against a range of threats, including security breaches, ag- gressive actions, or injury and liability is- sues. With many agencies requiring access to the system, from the FBI to building
maintenance, the terminal’s new system is more user friendly, making it much easier for operators to manage.
JFK International Airport has been at the forefront of aviation since its first commercial flight in 1948. Located 12 miles southeast of Lower Manhattan, the airport has expanded to include six airline terminals operated by the Port Authority of New York. Terminal One opened in 1998 and includes 11 gates and two hard- stands controlled by its own ramp control tower, which is equipped with state-of-the- art radio communications, weather infor- mation and gate video cameras. It is one of two terminals at JFK that has the ca- pability to handle the world’s largest pas- senger aircraft, the Airbus A380 aircraft.
Migrating an Around- the-Clock System
The biggest challenge of migrating JFK’s Terminal One analog system to IP was keeping all cameras operational throughout the transition. To do so, technicians took each live camera and connected it to an ad- ditional working system. In the process, vid- eo from the camera was recorded by both
Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock.com
systems. Once the camera was migrated and ported to the VMS, the camera was then de- commissioned from the analog system.
Migrating Terminal One’s system re- quired upgrades to ensure a solid solution from the ground up. New high-speed fiber optics, switches, PoE injectors, software, workstations and operating systems were installed. The terminal has close to one Petabyte of storage due to both security requirements and powerful analytics from Agent Vi that are used on recorded vid- eo, and to search across cameras. Much of the management structure is built on existing Dell servers, but all new servers are being custom built with close support from Milestone engineering.
Since the migration involved multiple VMS clients managing video from cam- eras throughout the terminal, technicians set up a multicasting network to reduce bandwidth. It allows multiple users to view the same video stream without taxing the server, which was lacking with the old ana- log system.
An extensive 10 Gig fiber network was installed to support the bandwidth needed for current and future cameras. All cam-
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0217 | SECURITY TODAY