Managing the Current Situation

Control rooms are required to provide the highest levels of security at lower and lower operating costs. They must do this whilst juggling multiple disparate systems and trying to ensure that procedures adhere to the latest internal and external regulations and policies. Situation management is a new technology innovation that delivers a fresh approach to streamlining the information that enters the control room, automating routine processes and freeing surveillance teams to do what they do best - make informed decisions.

The ideal control room structure is one that combines skilled operators, who have the freedom to use their training, judgement and experience, with automated systems that can be relied upon to manage more routine and mundane processes. The new situation management technologies currently arriving on the market can enhance a security teams' ability to prepare for, detect, respond to and de-brief quickly and effectively, all routine and emergency security situations, whilst reducing the associated costs.

A typical surveillance operation relies on a mass of incoming data from numerous disparate systems that feed into the control room ranging from access control, video systems, perimeter intrusion sensors, location tracking, panic buttons, environmental sensors and communication devices. Traditionally, it is the job of the operator to manually filter and process this continuous data stream, in order to then make the right decisions regarding how the incident should be handled. This is time intensive, not the best use of the operators' skills and therefore an expensive process.

Situation Management
Situation management technology works by converging all of the data feeds from multiple systems, from one or more sites, into a single unified platform. From this single platform the data can be interrogated against pre-defined rules (set by the control room) to determine the type of incident, assess the action required and implement the required level of response.

To illustrate how situation management can be used consider a typical daily (or often more frequent) occurrence that the surveillance team are presented with: A sensor positioned on the perimeter fence is disturbed and as a result a chain of automated events is immediately triggered. First the sensor sends an alert to the control room, where the operator is presented with a pre-defined message; at the same time the system deploys the organisation's perimeter intrusion procedures. In this instance the process involves automatically pointing the relevant CCTV camera toward the sensor and displaying the monitored and pre-recorded video to the operator in the control room, who is overseeing the incident in real-time. Meanwhile, the system locates the personnel best equipped to respond to the alert and sends a multimedia task assignment to their mobile devices, with an action to report if there is any evidence of tampering. If the responder confirms that there is such evidence the system then activates a further set of procedures for investigation and suspect search.

Throughout the entire process the operator is fully aware of how the situation is being dealt with, but because the system has flagged the event and instigated the correct procedures, he is able to take an overseeing role, providing vital human input and intervention where necessary.
Situation management has been proven to minimise the risk of operator error, enhance security response, protect existing security investments and reduce operating costs, through streamlining data, systems and procedures into a single platform. It is currently being relied upon by a number of public and private sector organisations around the world including Larnaka International airport, ICL, United States Federal Reserve System, Transnet and the Port of Virginia, to protect their critical infrastructures. One major implementation that is currently taking place is at the busiest container port in the United States and one of the largest cruise ship centres on the West Coast, The Port of Los Angles.
The Port of Los Angeles has begun implementation of situation management to provide an integrated command and control platform to fuse, correlate and analyse information across 16 security systems. In addition, it will enhance inter-agency collaboration and response capabilities for the port. The situation management software platform will help the port improve its situational awareness and incident response capabilities to ensure the safety and security of passengers and continuity of operations, by fusing siloed systems into an integrated command and control platform, and by correlating and analysing these different sources of security information.

Seamless External Communication
Through its integration capabilities, situation management will also seamlessly connect the Port of Los Angeles with external agencies to enhance the Port's ability to collaborate, share information and respond to incidents. In addition, the Port will use the system to automate its response plans for managing incidents, ensuring that standard operating procedures and best practices are always followed. All activity that is managed through the system is also logged, so port officials will be able to see what actions were taken, under what conditions, when and by whom.
The Port Police Technology Manager for the Port of Los Angeles, Julia Kirwan recently commented on the project: "Security is unquestionably a top priority for us. NICE Situator enhances our security capabilities by connecting the dots across all of our available information sources, and by streamlining and coordinating our response actions. It facilitates operational response so that field personnel and incident commanders know what's happening and what to do."

It is inevitable that control rooms will continue to become more and more complex and demanding environments. With situation management in place those best-of-breed yet disparate systems, that have seen significant investments made in them, can be managed with ease, ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time, to deliver the appropriate level of response to every alert or incident.