Homeland Security Market Research

Publication: 06/2009, Pages: 170, Figures: 55, Tables: 48,
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Driven by the Obama administration’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″ and by congressional pressure to attain – at long last – 100% screening of cargo on scheduled passengers flight, the US Explosives Detection Systems (EDS) market, which experienced a significant decline and stagnation during the 2004-2008 period, is poised to experience a double-digit CAGR over the 2010-2014 period.

The new report analyzes the market through several aspects:

• Equipment Market
• Refurbishing and Upgrade Market
• EDS Baggage handling System
• EDS Installation and Replacement Market

By Market Sector

• Checked-luggage screening
• Air Cargo screening
• Hand-Held baggage screening

The report presents business opportunities, as well as pipeline EDS products and technologies that should address future requirement of the TSA.

US Tomographic Explosives Detection Systems (EDS) Technologies & Markets 2010 – 2014 Publication: 06/2009, Pages: 170, Figures: 55, Tables: 48, Single User Price: $3,950.00

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Schiphol airport’s security R&D department is working with vendors and security experts on several pilot projects designed to improve security, reduce cost of screening, improve customer experience and streamline operations.

The projects that are not classified include a new self service luggage check-in unit, improved monitoring of people and baggage, and new people screening systems.

One of the more visible signs of these new projects is the total gradual redesign of checked-in luggage facilities. The new system, which is undergoing tests, includes a self service luggage check-in facility. This is a cavernous system that “swallows” the passengers’ suitcases, saving the airline agents the need to heft, weight and tag each suitcase as they ticket the passenger. In order to avoid unfortunate situations, the new luggage check-in system includes special sensors designed to detect the presence of living humans/animals in the luggage. If the pilot succeeds, the centralization and self-service orientation of the new system will enable a total redesign of the agent’s counters, saving much needed space.

According to airport officials, the current cost of screening a passenger (including checked luggage and hand baggage) is about $7.00. This cost is covered by various fees and levies that are attached to the cost of each airline ticket. Aviation security is privileged in this sense because the ratio between an average plane ticket and the cost of security is such that users (passengers) raise little or no objections to financing their own security through added fees. If the same policy would be tried in rail transportation, for example, it is reasonable to assume that passengers will not be as accommodating to the added security fees.

One of the areas facing large expansion at Schiphol is that of security cameras (CCTV). Currently there are about 1200 video cameras around the airport, monitoring people and luggage throughout the three terminals. Over the next two years, the airport’s security managers plan to increase the number of cameras to about 4,000. This will create a situation where no area in the airport will not be covered by cameras.

Behavioral profiling is another area of experimentation that Schiphol is investing in substantially. Hundreds of uniformed and undercover security agents monitor passengers and luggage throughout the airport around the clock; many of them undergo behavioral profiling training and practice their newly acquired skills as they patrol the terminals.

Schiphol’s latest people screening pilot project includes 15 units of SecuriScan mm wave threat detection portals by L3 Communications. These portals are tested extensively, and so far, the airport is satisfied with the results despite several problems.

On the plus side, the portals appear to be working consistently, delivering a constant screening throughput of about 3.5 passengers/minute (about 210 passengers/hour). The portals are simple to operate and passengers seem to understand how to behave during the screening without much coaching; actually, the entire process is pretty self explanatory, as the place to stand is marked clearly on the portal’s floor. The operator, standing at the portal’s exit point, guides each passenger to lift her/his arms up to allow under arm screening. The entire process takes about 2 seconds. The rest of the time is spent waiting for the screener (working in a nearby secluded booth) to observe the resultant pictures and make a judgment. Portal operator and screener communicate by radio, and the operator seems to be quite adept at managing the flow of passengers while communicating with the screener.

On the minus side, false alarm rates at this point are very high (about 50%). This is mainly due to the fact that people do not yet understand that they should empty their pockets completely before entering the portal. Small objects around the body and in pockets appear quite clearly on the black and white pictures. Enough pictures are taken to allow a rotating video-like display, making the screener’s job easier.

Another potential problem (most probably in the U.S. ) is the visibility of human genitalia on the screened images. Even though the face of the screened individual is completely obscured, the remaining visible genitalia is certain to evoke objections in U.S. operations.

The airport’s security R&D department is working on automating the process, through software modifications and “grouping” of screening functions, so that a single screener will be able to service several portals. Such a move will bring about considerable reduction in the cost of screening, and will make the entire process much more cost effective.

Another effort of the local R&D department is to fuse multiple threat screenings into a single operation, combining, for example metal detection, trace detection and mm-wave screening into a single portal. The department is also working with several vendors on “Open Space” screening modes, though according to department officials, “there is a long way to go” before such modes of threat detection are deployed operationally at the airport.

Weapons detection systems (gates and wands), for decades counter terrorism’s most ubiquitous and most visible mitigation tools, will soon start a gradual phasing out and replacement process, in favor of new technologies that will hopefully be able to detect a larger spectrum of threats, faster, more accurately, and for less money.

The ubiquitous metal detection gate, and the even more ubiquitous weapon detection wand are not about to become an endangered specie anytime soon, but multi-threat portals, and hand-held units, utilizing exotic technologies such as mm wave, terahertz and microwave, among others, are beginning to show up gradually.

The new systems, some offering standoff capabilities, need to undergo extensive field tests, but initial input from vendors and users suggests that the new systems will be able to bridge some of the more glaring current gaps in detection capabilities.

In the threat detection portals, the situation is very interesting because the current crop of trace detection portals does not really provide a cost-effective, and/or operational response to the real need of the industry, both in aviation security, and even more so in transportation and public security tasks. That creates an urgent need for systems that will deliver robust performance, include detection of multiple threats (e.g., weapons, explosives, chemical), in a manner that will reduce false alarms to near zero, and provide as accurate an indication of the nature of the threat, in as short a time, at the lowest possible cost (probably requiring an automated process).

Standoff threat detection solutions offer a promise to extend the utility of such technologies to road blocks, malls, sports arenas, public facilities, transportation hubs and even roads. Several systems, including SPO-7R™passive millimeter wave, by Planning Systems Incorporated (PSI), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Technology Solutions Group of QinetiQ North America, are currently undergoing pilot field tests in various facilities around the U.S. Before the end of 2009, users and vendors will be able to start assessing the potential impact of some of the new technologies on the threat detection market. We, at HSRC, think that this is a market with plenty of potential promise, and that despite the economic crisis, several systems will penetrate the market and start providing better threat detection.

For the last decade, explosives detection technologies and practices appeared to have been frozen in time. Companies continued to bring to market the same decades old technologies – with improvements, with better performance, but with essentially the same technical, technological and cost-effectiveness outlook.

But despite the dormant appearance of this sector, it appears that a lot of work is being done in the background to change the essential characteristics of the offerings, using new technologies, new approaches to deployment and usage and new thinking about expanding markets.

New technologies, such as Low Cost MOS-Based Electro-Chemical Sensor Networks, Laser Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Pulsed Laser Photodissociation/Laser Induced Fluorescence (PSP/LIF) and Mechanically Scanned MM Wave Imaging, are beginning to challenge the conventional approaches to explosives detection.

New companies, such as Qylur Security Systems Inc. in California are doing some very interesting work, challenging the traditional engineering, philosophy and cost-effectiveness mathematics of the explosives detection sector.

All these activities hold promise for much needed change in the explosives detection, a change that will open the market to possible expansion beyond aviation, high security assets and military operations (including force protection).

It is also important to keep in mind another, further away, horizon, around 2020, when we expect the explosives detection market to take another leap forward, away from dedicated systems and toward open-space screening.

After a couple of heady years, with petrol dollars flooding the Kingdom and intoxicating everybody, Saudi Arabia’s ruling family faces a set of challenges that makes a high-wire walk across the Niagara Falls look like an afternoon stroll in the park. And the stakes for the Royals, the Kingdom, the Middle East , and indeed the world, are formidable indeed.

Internally, despite the apparent quiet, the Kingdom is as restive and polarized as it has ever been. On one side, reformists are pressuring the leaders to provide the country with a bill of rights (albeit Islamic-based), release the multitudes of political prisoners, end harassment of journalists and other media professionals, and rein in the power of the feared “Religious Police” Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV). On the other side, the same “Mutaween” keepers of morals, under the tutelage of their arch conservative leaders, often exhibit a zealousness above and beyond the call of duty, abusing people, in their press for moral purity across the Kingdom.

Al Quaeda, still headed by an ex Saudi, is still viewing Saudi Arabia as a puppet of the Americans and the West, and threatens continuously to violently demonstrate it’s displeasure with the foreign presence in Saudi Arabia. Insurgent activity is not overtly felt lately, but if you take into account the broad-base, grass-root sympathy Al Quaeda enjoys in the Kingdom, it does not require powers of prophesy to deduce that this is a temporary lull and that the Kingdom faces significant internal turmoil in the near to medium future. Skilled foreign workers, the back bone of the Saudi economy, are feeling unsafe in the country, many are leaving and are more difficult to replace, although the recent economic downturn may reverse that trend.

Externally, things are hardly encouraging; The ascent of Iran , its unmasked push for hegemony in the Gulf region, its push for nuclear capability and its obvious economic distress, places a political, and functional hot potato in the lap of the House of Saud, at a time when it feels vulnerable enough. The Saudis, as the leaders of the Suni world, do not want to see a giant, hungry and angry Shiite giant heaving just across the narrow water of the Arabian Gulf from them. This is an apprehension that the Saudis share with all their neighbors and most of the Arab (Suni) world. Persian– Arab relations were never an easy slide, are worsening, and are getting more challenging by the day.

The Saudis, who consider themselves master negotiators and supreme mediators, got together with pretty much the rest of the Arab world to try to create a counter-weight to Iran , in the form of a pan-Arab peace process with their other arch nemesis – Israel . Apparently Iran is a much more palpable threat on Saudis than Israel . But unfortunately, the Israelis did not even bother to reject the Saudi-led Arab peace proposal. They (Israelis) pretty much ignored the literal plea by the Arab world to come to the table and settle things up. So the Saudis, who do not want to mediate, just formulate, introduce and take credit for any progress, are stuck between a rock and a hard place – they managed to anger the Iranians with their overture toward the Israelis, and got nothing good to show for it in return.

Add to this an inherently lacking defense establishment, and a propensity for duplicating internal defense structures so as to prevent a single body from acquiring coup-worthy powers, and you can see why governing Saudi Arabia is no picnic.

One thing is sure, the life-loving Saudis are unlikely to reduce their homeland security and defense outlays in such vulnerable times. In that sense, Saudi Arabia will probably exhibit stability of the kind that is unlikely to be seen anywhere else in the world.