Passenger Screening
Summary Table:
Technology Benefits & Liabilities
Technology Benefits Liabilities
Deep Trace Able to find explosives Time consuming, procedure intensive
Red/green light detection Labour intensive
May be defeated by good cleanliness
Not able to find metallic weapons
Trace Portals Able to find explosives Reliability issues have been noted
Red/green light detection Slow – about 15 sec/passengers
May be defeated by good cleanliness
Not able to find metallic weapons
!QR Shoe Scanner Rapid method for screening shoes Limited breadth of materials –
Detects small quantities of high power
Complimentary technology needed
explosivesRed/green light detection Cost/benefit ratio needs to be improved.
QR Portal Able to find small quantities regardless of Limited breadth of materials
location and distribution
Background noise elimination may yield a
large system
Some safety issues to be resolved
Millimetre Wave Rapid inspection possible Poor image quality – need a method to
Minimal passenger impact
resolve anomalies
Able to locate concealed items
Large systems
No use of ionising radiation
Blind spots on/in the body
No automatic detection
Backscatter X-ray High quality image No automatic detection
Slow inspection – passenger intrusive
Blind spots on/in the body
Ionising radiation
Privacy vs. detection concerns
Transmission X-ray High quality image Larger dose of ionising radiation
No/minimal blind spots No automatic detection
Rapid inspection Insensitive to some explosive geometries
Physically wide system
Terahertz Potential for material discrimination Costly
Potential stand-off detection Immature
Signal affected by water/vapour
Operationally unproven
Regulators need to formulate, com- address the overall problem rather than and refined processes for testing and
municate and fund a long-range vision just promote their own inventory. deploying new technologies, it should be
and rollout plan. This will encourage The recent attempted terrorist acts in possible to achieve real security
private industry and investors by the UK should provide governments with improvements for passenger (and cabin
giving a consistent long-term return for the impetus to set aside funds, rapidly baggage) screening in the short term.
their technology developments, trial and start deploying the more Let’s hope we have the luxury of time to
deployment and improvements and mature solutions while encouraging do so before terrorists once again test
reduce the cyclic nature of the business. development of newer approaches that our defences.
Companies will need to cooperate with may play a future role. Security improve-
each other, consolidate or purchase ments won’t be cheap, but with the The author is President of Wolff
complimentary technologies to truly appropriate will among the stakeholders Consulting Services
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www.asi-mag.com February 2007 Aviationsecurityinternational
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