SAN JOSE, Calif.—A $1.2 billion modernization project at the Mineta San José International Airport, which is slated for completion in June, has improved the operational efficiency of the airport and enabled its transition to an IP-based security system.

The airport built a new concourse and terminal, refurbished an existing terminal, consolidated its rental car garage, and put in all new infrastructure, said Emily Zimmerman, airport operation manager at Mineta. “We had everything under construction at one time,” she said. Undertaking this kind of project while still operating a working airport was incredibly challenging, as the airport had to maintain its security operations while transitioning to the new system.

The airport had a Pelco analog system in place, but determined that it needed to transition to an IP-based video surveillance system. The airport installed DVTel’s intelligent Security Operations Center, an IP-based video surveillance solution, which allowed the airport to integrate some of its existing equipment onto a new platform.

The system had other advantages as well. “One of the aspects of DVTel’s platform is really there are very few components that are proprietary and it’s pretty much an open system and there are many different vendors we can use,” said Randy Dinger, vice president of engineering at ID Consulting Solutions, the integrator of the project. “For storage we could use IBM, Dell, etc. and all our PCs are standard off-the-shelf, so really there’s only the software itself that is proprietary.”

The challenge was securing a combination of brand new spaces as well as retrofitting existing areas of the airport. “We had an opportunity to create an entirely new secured area and checkpoint and we designed it from scratch and put everything where we wanted it,” Zimmerman said. Whereas, at the existing areas of the airport, they were slightly more limited in what could be changed.

Migrating to IP has provided the airport with clearer and more detailed images than with the previous system, and vastly improves the airport’s ability to search for specific events in the footage, said Dinger. “We can run an archive query for up to six cameras and synchronize them, so if there was an event we can pull up six cameras from the archive and show the same timeframe on the same screen,” he said.

The upgraded surveillance system has improved situational awareness from a security standpoint, as well as operational processes, said Zimmerman. “A nice option with the IP-based system is the ability to give other users viewing capability,” she said. “It allows remote access from desktop PC so customer service can see lines queuing and concession activities and the operations folks can view parts of the airfield and checkpoint areas. We can restrict their access so they’re not seeing things that TSA does not want out there and we’re able to limit the number and location of cameras [of each department],” she said.

While this system hasn’t been completely rolled out, Zimmerman said they are already considering future capabilities of the system. “We’re trying to future proof ourselves as we go through the improvement program,” she said. “We’re looking into video analytics down the road and the ability to tie more into our access control system and adding mapping capability and other options was an important factor in what we wanted.”

The current system does incorporate some integration of other security systems. For example, if an alarm is activated, cameras are programmed to automatically focus on that area and give those monitoring the system an instantaneous view of the exact location. In the future, Dinger said they would also like to add a mapping system that visually illustrates the location of cameras, making it even easier for operators to select and view relevant cameras during an incident.

Dinger said one of the most critical considerations for a project of this scale was to plan for the amount of storage required. “It’s important from the start to determine what you need to maintain for archived storage space,” he said. “We have 50 terabytes in this airport and nearly 400 cameras that will record to that and we’re maintaining 30 days of video.”

From a security operational point of view, Zimmerman said bringing in critical stakeholders early to the game was critical. “Get the right people involved during the RFP contract process,” she said. Bringing in the technical people who are familiar with the intricate workings of the system, specifically. “I know it’s time consuming and takes folks away from their normal jobs, but it’s important to have people there who understand and use the system versus consultants brought in or other folks who haven’t used the system. We ended up with a good product and happy with our contractor but to do your homework.”