Thermal CCTV takes off at Turin

SAGAT Turin Airport in Italy has decided to turn to thermal imaging in a bid to overcome visibility issues and increase its security even further. The airfield lies next to a military facility, and it faced problems with detecting intrusion along its 9km perimeter fence in darkness, haze and fog. Even though the fence gives an alarm when someone is trying to get through, it had often been impossible to identify the cause, and there was no system in place that could identify a security threat outside of the fence.

The airport decided to address the problem by installing five Sentry thermal imaging systems from FLIR Systems into its security network. The Sentry systems, with integrated programmable pan/tilt, can be slaved to alarms from other sensors – such as the alarms from the fence – and provide a day and night “situation awareness” that covers most of the airport and also reaches a short distance outside the fence line.

Turin Airport general manager Marco Morriale said: “We already had a lot of different cameras and sensors in our security network. What made us consider thermal imagers was the fact that with the thermal imaging technology and a pan-tilt solution we can ensure surveillance over a rather big area during day and night with only a few cameras. During the test evaluation of the thermal images we came to the conclusion that the systems over-performed our expectations. The integration of the ThermoVision sentry cameras has been handled by Gruppo IPL, the same company that had been integrating most of our security system here at SAGAT Turin airport. The integration went smoothly, since FLIR Systems uses common standards and the five systems are now fully up and running in our security network.”

The heat is on

The Sentry system is a thermal imaging system and provides reliable, continuous day/night surveillance. The system consists of an uncooled thermal imager with an integrated and programmable pan-tilt and a daylight TV camera.

The thermal imager has two optical fields of view. The wide field of view is 20 degrees and provides a good overview of the area. The narrow field of view is 5 degrees and makes it quick and easy to zoom in to an object to identify potential threats or to identify the cause of false alarms.

Persons can be detected at distances of over two kilometres. “It can be quite foggy in Turin and it is a good thing that the thermal imager can see through fog to a certain extent,” Morriale says.

FLIR says the pan-tilt “quickly responds to any alarm or command and allows an azimuth of 0-120 degrees per second, so it does not have to take more than approximately a second before it is pointing in the right direction”. It has programmable auto-scan and the speed, dwell time, and field of view on the thermal imager and daylight camera can be set in a scanning pattern.

Fitting in nicely

The ThermoVision sentry cameras are integrated into the existing network of security sensors. The networking software was developed by Gruppo IPL and allows for the easy control of all security sensors that are installed into the network from one place. The software also allows for recording and storage of images for later review.

From any client workstation it is possible not only to see real time images, but also to move the cameras using arrow controls, select IR/TV sources, autofocus, zoom, etc.

Advanced automatic image processing and analysis functionality was implemented, including motion detection, history log, video recording, and automatic direction change on alarm. It is also possible to have the cameras examine any location simply by clicking on any point on the on-screen map.

The installation along the 9km long perimeter consists of 26 standard CCTV cameras, five Sentry cameras, a video server for every camera, more than 21km of optical fibre, 16 optical routers at 100Mb, four optical routers at 1Gb, 24 intelligent I/O subsystems, 18 UPS and 15 thermal-controlled rack cabinets.

Keeping passengers safe

Morriale says there are now five thermal imaging cameras on-line 24 hours a day, allowing security staff to see details and events that were previously impossible to detect.

“For example, we are now aware that some rabbits are living in the airport, and that a lot of people come next to our fence to take photos of the landing or taking off aircraft, even at night,” he says. “It is important for us to ensure the safety of the passengers travelling through SAGAT Turin Airport and I believe that it is important to continue evaluating and improving our security systems as new security threats arise.

“Even though thermal imagers are more expensive than standard CCTV cameras, the systems are easily justified through their performance and the fact that every single system covers such a wide area.”