Airport Surveillance: Protecting the Safety and Wellbeing of Staff

Teri Ho discusses four challenges where surveillance solutions can improve the management, safety, and security of the airport workforce.

1. Verifying clearance and controlling access

Challenge

Managing a large and diverse workforce across the airport can be complex and requires identifying, authenticating and processing personnel through a wide range of (often highly restricted) back-office and airside work areas.

Solution

With an intelligently integrated solution, the simple act of swiping an RFID staff clearance badge can trigger appropriate automated responses for immediate action:

• Surveillance footage prioritization automatically or manually matches against ID photos held on the system;
• Cross-referencing with staffing schedules checks whether that individual should be on shift;
• People-counting verification confirms that only one individual (the badge holder) passes through the door to prevent tailgating.

2. Enforcing necessary safety protocols

Challenge

Failing to follow the correct protocols can have profound safety implications for both staff and passengers. Additionally, airports now face the challenge of quickly identifying potential COVID risks and managing active case detection.

Solution

Combining surveillance cameras with third-party technology, airports can configure macros and workflows to enforce Standard Operating Procedures. This functionality ensures that safety and security incidents are dealt with in real time. For example:

• If a worker strays over a virtual perimeter line, is not displaying their ID badge or removes their high-visibility jacket;
• If too many personnel are in a specific area in contradiction with social distancing rules.

These incidents can also be logged for post-event safety training, review of existing procedures, and long-term solution planning.

3. Keeping track of staff wellbeing

Challenge

Finding ways to monitor safety protocols is one thing, but looking after the physical and mental well-being of staff is a much broader task. From guaranteeing the safety of lone workers to ensuring employees are not overworked or overtired, airports face a unique HR challenge.

Solution

Technology such as lone-worker systems, body-worn cameras, and mobile devices can be integrated and monitored to ensure workers are safe. Operational software and technology can also be combined into the surveillance command and control platform, including access control, shift roster databases and clocking-out systems. Rules and processes are then applied to flag any potential risks, such as a person working too many shifts in a row.

4. Clear guidance in emergency scenarios

Challenge

Implementing emergency procedures quickly, efficiently, and consistently across an airport is vital to respond to medical assistance requests, severe maintenance issues, suspected security breaches, fire, or malicious attacks. Factor in complex layouts and the volume of people in question, and the need for clear, concise support in a crisis becomes apparent.

Solution

A unified, centralised command and control solution can manage the deployment, coordination and collaboration with external emergency response teams.
By combining mapping data, IDs, training information, and surveillance data, operators can quickly locate incidents and dispatch the nearest staff members with the right skills to help. In addition, emergency services can be guided to incident locations rapidly using the most direct route possible through the complex airport environment.