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How do the world’s busiest airports secure themselves?

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Air travel passenger numbers have bounced back to near 2019 levels (95%), as 2023 saw around 8.7 billion people travel by plane. At the world’s busiest international airports, it’s not unusual for several hundred thousand people to arrive, take off or transit through their operational setup every single day for months on end.

With such vast numbers of visitors, how can airports of this size and complexity maintain a viable level of security that protects all passengers and employees, without deploying a heavy-handed approach that compromises customer satisfaction?

Threading this needle is becoming increasingly manageable thanks to the culmination of several emerging security technologies. Surveillance, scanning, biometrics and other emerging innovations provide airports with the capabilities needed to retain strategic oversight of their entire operational infrastructure and every person inhabiting it.

Security Exemplars – 3 Top-rated international airports

London Heathrow (LHR): Handling approximately 80 million passengers and 14 million tons of goods annually, LHR is one of the world’s busiest airports. Monitoring and protecting a 3,000+ hectare site, the airport relies on a single unified security platform utilising 8,000+ security cameras and an AI-empowered control room capable of constantly monitoring 93 miles of baggage belts and 150,000 vehicles. Passenger processing is always a key element of customer-friendly security, and Heathrow is a world leader in this field. June 2024 saw the introduction of the latest generation of advanced security scanners that are so accurate that LHR has successfully scrapped the “100ml max liquid” rule.

Hamad International Airport (HIA): Doha’s Hamad International Airport welcomed 25.9 million passengers in the first half of 2024, and continually invested in innovative security technologies to keep pace with the demands of its rising visitor rate. Its latest development was completed in early 2024, which saw the instalment five SCANTER 5602 Enhanced Surface Movement Radars (eSMR), which are designed to not only enhance ground movement surveillance but also to detect airborne objects, such as drones. As UAV capabilities (and possible threats) increase, complete oversight and control of airport airspace is a security prerequisite. Also, thanks to a combination of advanced C2 scanning, dedicated security transfer lanes and biometrics-based fingerprint reader checks, over 95% of HIA passengers wait for less than five minutes to complete the security process.

Zurich Airport (ZRH): One of the most secure airports in Europe, ZRH aims to extend its reputation as this year it’s trialling two AI-empowered digital security scanners. Passengers stand on a platform before millimetre-wave technology renders them into an anonymous digital avatar while assessing any threats or prohibited items on their body or clothing. The AI algorithms automatically detect and flag anything suspicious for security personnel to inspect. Not only has this approach begun to improve passenger processing times, but it is also reducing false alarm rates while eliminating any potential racial/gender bias against passengers.

Airport Security is a mindset as well as a practical necessity

Every change made to an international airport’s security infrastructure must be viewed in the wider context of balancing the end-users’ satisfaction and safety. Security measures have to be wide-ranging enough to detect all viable threats, effective enough to stop them, but discerning enough to keep a light touch on the overall passenger experience.

These three exemplar airports, as well as hundreds more in their peer class, are maintaining this delicate balance successfully by proactively adopting emerging technologies. This applies at the customer-facing end as well as in the control rooms and across the airport’s distributed digital infrastructure. Scanners and physical security measures are becoming more accurate as well as less intrusive. Meanwhile, the surveillance, tracking and coordination methods needed to gain complete operational oversight of an airport are becoming more integrated, automated and intelligent than ever.

By finding the right solutions, and the right partners to deliver them, even the busiest international airports can stay one step ahead of the myriad threats that face them on a daily basis.