ACCESS CONTROL/Safer grounds, safer sky
Operating more than 220,000 international and domestic corporate and chartered flights annually, the Morristown, N.J., Airport is a general aviation reliever airport in the New York metropolitan area. Although the airport is not federally required to provide security, officials wanted to fortify the airport’s public areas so tenants, users, and the community would feel more comfortable with the facility’s operations. “We want the community that surrounds the airport to know that we’re doing everything we can to make Morristown Airport a safe and secure environment, and we want our tenants to feel good about being here,” says Maria Renner, the airport’s manager of government affairs.
The airport’s existing analog-based surveillance camera and gate access system could not integrate additional sub-systems and would have been costly to expand. Airport officials wanted to install a new Web-based access control and video surveillance array that could be expanded without additional costs.
The airport contracted with Farmingdale, N.J.-based Service Works to install a secure TCP/IP network and redesign facility security. The contractor replaced the existing equipment with 14 surveillance cameras, visitor entry stations, access card readers at doors, and new vertical pivot gates, and connected them all on the IP network. All software systems and devices were manufactured by Louisville, Ky.-based Honeywell Security.
Now, from most computer workstations or mobile devices in the airport, operators can monitor cameras and open gates for emergency vehicles. Airport employees carry contact-less smartcards that can store their credentials, critical medical information, and open gates and locked doors. They also can trigger other automatic functions at the facility, such as arming intrusion detection systems.
Anyone without an access card who approaches a gate triggers a motion detector that trains nearby cameras on that person to record video, and they can ask for permission to enter from intercoms at each gate and door. Airport officials plan to install a wireless mesh network so security patrol officers can see alarms and video from the cameras on mobile computers. Officials also will expand the system into the hangar and taxi areas.