FUSION OF SECURITY SYSTEM DATA TO IMPROVE AIRPORT SECURITY
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Contract No. DTFA 03-99-C-00006 between the National Academy of Sciences and the Transportation Security Administration. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine
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COMMITTEE ON ASSESSMENT OF SECURITY TECHNOLOGIES FOR TRANSPORTATION
JAMES F. O’BRYON, Chair,
The O’Bryon Group
SANDRA L. HYLAND, Vice Chair,
Tokyo Electron Technology Center, America
CHERYL A. BITNER,
Pioneer Unmanned Aerial vehicles, Inc.
DONALD E. BROWN,
University of Virginia
JOHN B. DALY,1 Consultant,
Arlington, Virginia
COLIN G. DRURY,
State University of New York, Buffalo
PATRICK GRIFFIN,
Sandia National Laboratories
HARRY E. MARTZ, JR.,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
RICHARD McGEE,
Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground (retired)
RICHARD L. ROWE,
SafeView (retired)
H. BRUCE WALLACE,
MMW Concepts LLC
Staff
GARY FISCHMAN, Director,
National Materials Advisory Board
JAMES KILLIAN, Study Director (until June 2006)
EMILY ANN MEYER, Study Director (from November 2006)
TERI G. THOROWGOOD, Administrative Coordinator
NATIONAL MATERIALS ADVISORY BOARD
KATHARINE G. FRASE, Chair,
IBM
LYLE H. SCHWARTZ, Vice Chair, Consultant,
Chevy Chase, Maryland
JOHN ALLISON,
Ford Motor Company
PAUL BECHER,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
CHERYL R. BLANCHARD,
Zimmer, Inc.
EVERETT E. BLOOM,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (retired)
BARBARA D. BOYAN,
Georgia Institute of Technology
L. CATHERINE BRINSON,
Northwestern University
JOHN W. CAHN,
University of Washington
DIANNE CHONG,
The Boeing Company
PAUL CITRON,
Medtronic, Inc. (retired)
FIONA M. DOYLE,
University of California, Berkeley
SOSSINA M. HAILE,
California Institute of Technology
CAROL A. HANDWERKER,
Purdue University
ELIZABETH HOLM,
Sandia National Laboratories
ANDREW T. HUNT,
nGimat Company
DAVID W. JOHNSON, JR.,
Stevens Institute of Technology
ROBERT H. LATIFF,
SAIC
TERRY LOWE,
Los Alamos National Laboratory
KENNETH H. SANDHAGE,
Georgia Institute of Technology
LINDA SCHADLER,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
ROBERT E. SCHAFRIK,
GE Aircraft Engines
JAMES C. SEFERIS,
GloCal University
SHARON L. SMITH,
Lockheed Martin Corporation
Staff
GARY FISCHMAN, Director
MICHAEL MOLONEY, Senior Program Officer
EMILY ANN MEYER, Program Officer
TERI G. THOROWGOOD, Administrative Coordinator
HEATHER LOZOWSKI, Financial Associate
Preface
The Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation was appointed by the National Research Council (NRC) in response to a request from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for a study of technologies to protect the nation’s air transportation system from terrorist attacks (see Appendix B for biographical sketches of the committee members). The committee judged that the best way to provide a timely response would be to produce a series of short reports on promising technologies, focusing on specific topics of greatest interest to the sponsor. This is the fourth of four such topical reports, all of which focus on air transportation security.1 The commit-
tee believes that the air transportation environment provides a test case for the deployment of security technologies that might subsequently be used to protect other transporttation modes as well.
This report focuses on what is commonly termed data fusion. The possibility of a terrorist slipping through a multilayered security system still exists, given the current configuration of security architectures across the vast majority of our nation’s commercial airports. This is not to say that the technology that is being brought to bear is not useful or effective. It is effective. However, from the committee’s vantage point, the various security systems and the technologies contained in them could be connected in such a way that they could extract significantly more information regarding possible threats. This could be accomplished in real time with each system operating in a more or less stand-alone mode.
Much can be learned from the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) experience with data fusion, as the DOD has successful systems now deployed throughout all of its services. The process of achieving these successes, however, has been very gradual, and the initial programs were not always successful. An understanding of the successes and failures on the DOD front will allow those choosing to implement data fusion in a transportation security setting to avoid making similar mistakes.
The committee acknowledges and thanks the speakers from government and industry who took the time to share their ideas and experiences in briefings at its meetings (see Appendix C). The committee offers a special thanks to Donald Brown and Cheryl Bitner, who were the major contributors to the writing of this report. As chair of the committee through May 31, 2005, Thomas S. Hartwick also greatly assisted the work of the current committee through his participation in many of its activities. Finally, the committee acknowledges the valuable contributions to the completion of this report from Gary Fischman, director of the National Materials Advisory Board, and from NRC staff members James Killian and Teri Thorowgood.
James F. O’Bryon, Chair
Sandra L. Hyland, Vice Chair
Committee on Assessment of Security Technologies for Transportation
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Arnold Barnett, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Grace A. Clark, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
Philip E. Coyle, Science Strategies,
Vijayan N. Nair, University of Michigan,
Robert L. Popp, Aptima, Inc.,
Gerald M. Powell, U.S. Army Research Laboratory,
Andrew P. Sage, George Mason University, and
James M. Tien, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Steven Berry, University of Chicago. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests solely with the authoring committee and the institution.
Figures, Tables, and Box
FIGURES
1-1 |
Generic airport diagram showing various airport spaces and some likely sites for attacks, |
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2-1 |
Data fusion overview, |
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2-2 |
Notional individual security system response histograms and response profiles for the test sample—Security System 1 and Security System 2, |
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2-3 |
Conditional response profiles for each notional individual security system, |
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2-4 |
Individual security system operational mode with no data fusion, |
2-5 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for each security system—Security System 1 and Security System 2—for the test sample, |
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2-6 |
Example of a Bayes table for examining test results, |
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2-7 |
Decision-data fusion with AND logic, |
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2-8 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the AND decision-data fusion for the combination of two notional security systems, |
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2-9 |
Combining security systems with OR decision-data fusion logic, |
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2-10 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the OR decision-data fusion for the combination of two notional security systems, |
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2-11 |
Parametric-data fusion response values from two notional security systems, |
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2-12 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the parametric-data fusion for the combination of two notional security systems, |
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2-13 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for different modes of operation, |
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2-14 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for random permutations of security system measurements in different modes of operation, |
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2-15 |
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for random permutations of security system measurements in different modes of operation, |
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4-1 |
Notional diagram showing the various radiation and particle interactions with matter that are used for the detection of explosives material, |
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4-2 |
Notional flow diagram illustrating one way in which an explosive detection system (EDS) could be coupled to two existing alarm-resolving systems, nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR), and pulsed fast neutron analysis (PFNA), |
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4-3 |
Data can be fed to later checkpoints to achieve an airport-wide model of data fusion, |
TABLES
2-1 |
Summary of Fusion Results for Different Modes of Operation for the Two Example Security Systems, |
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3-1 |
Data Fusion Projects of the Transportation Security Administration, |
BOX
ES-1 |
Definitions of Concepts, |