The award-winning company will also present the new features and functionalities in the Witness 2 control suite
On Stand 5/C115 at IFSEC International 2012, which takes place at The NEC, Birmingham over 14-17 May, Navtech Radar will be showcasing the distinct advantages of radar-based perimeter and wide-area security solutions. Highlights will include an outdoor, live demonstration of the capabilities of the company’s AdvanceGuard system and Witness 2, the latest, significantly improved version of the company’s back-office processing and control system.
Radar allows users to take a much more proactive security stance than other line-of-sight, perimeter and broken-beam solutions. It has long been the technology of choice for protecting critical infrastructure, as well as for military, naval and civil aerospace applications. However, says Navtech Radar’s Managing Director Phil Avery, it is time for users and specifiers to recognise that the same capabilities are also available to the wider civil security market.
“Radar offers a 360o monitoring capability. It also allows the implementation of complex rules and algorithms which enable the number of false alarms generated by a security system to be dramatically reduced. That’s especially important for sites where there are a lot of complex movements; over time, a radar-based system can be configured and tuned to account for legitimate activity whilst detecting and warning of suspicious movements in a similar way to a manned guard.”
This flexibility is of particular interest where a low-key approach is needed or where a facility’s operations necessitate free movement of people and equipment, he notes: “Many traditional detection technologies require the construction or maintenance of physical barriers. The latter can involve a major investment which has to be factored into the overall solution cost. They also restrict movement and flexibility, which means they’re not an option in some circumstances, for example over water or where legitimate movement takes place within the detection area, such as on an airfield runway or railway line.”
The company’s AdvanceGuard system can detect and track a walking man at up to 1,000m in environmental conditions which will defeat video. It makes it possible to observe areas of interest beyond a facility’s physical boundaries in which untoward activity, such as preparations for a break-in or assault, would go unobserved – and so unchecked – by other security systems. At this year’s IFSEC, Navtech Radar will be using a vehicle-mounted implementation of AdvanceGuard to demonstrate the system’s capabilities to visitors. This will be located outside, directly across from the exhibition hall’s entrance.
But while the front-end capabilities will be plain to see, there are also exciting developments in the supporting processing and control system. The new Witness 2 adds some significant improvements to an already comprehensive capability. Among the many new features is a classification module which uses complex algorithms to evaluate target characteristics. This allows intrusions to be classified as a person or a vehicle and therefore allows the system user to mount an appropriate response.
A track history visualisation system enables users to review the details of previous incursions based on criteria such as time, location and so on. A complete track history can then be displayed on the system’s user interface, enabling the user to see exactly where an intrusion took place and where the intruder went within a site. The user interface itself now supports OpenStreetMap, enabling system operators to display scaled maps of their facilities as part of the background within the scan window. The map data is automatically retrieved from the internet, requires no additional configuration or setup, and can be used in both online and offline modes.
Witness 2 now also offers support for a wider range of cameras including those from Pelco, Flir, Bosch, 360 Vision and many others, while an improved tracker with multi-channel processing provides a very powerful solution for complex sites where different parameters have to be used in order to get the best performance from the radar. It also means that systems can be tuned to look for different targets in different areas.
Finally, the part of Witness 2 which handles inter-connectivity and database integration now features a hot standby/failover facility to protect against computer failure.
Contact
www.navtechradar.com
