Airport sniffer dogs safe from dole
Judy Skatssoon
ABC Science Online
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
Heathrow Airport
The terrorism alert caused chaos at Heathrow Airport last week. But could new security technology prevent a repeat performance?
No matter how sophisticated airport security technology becomes, it will probably never remove the need for sniffer dogs and bag searches, experts say.
The alleged foiled terrorist plot that affected flights between the UK and US last week has led to calls for newer, smarter security technology.
Devices on the horizon include insect-based sensors, wallpaper that sniffs out explosives as you walk past and smart closed-circuit TV that can pick a suspect out from a crowd or tell if you've left a bomb under a seat.
But Martin Cebis, whose company will present its all-in-one chemical sensing and surveillance system at an international military technology conference in the US next week, says would-be terrorists will probably always be one step ahead of technology.
"Ultimately you're dealing with human ingenuity [and] you're fighting a moving target and need to be able to adapt," says Cebis, chief executive officer of Western Australia's Embedded Technologies.
"I think you'll still need searching and those kinds of things to occur."
Cebis is also among a number of speakers who will brief security advisors and researchers in Canberra on the latest developments today.
Chemical sensing
One of the emerging areas of security, particularly in light of the alleged plot to carry liquid explosives onto planes, is in chemical sensing.
Associate Professor Adam McCluskey of the University of Newcastle is an Australian researcher developing chemical sensors based on drug design technology.
The sensors are can be "screen printed" onto fabrics, paper, plastics and even wallpaper.
"It's basically a synthetic antibody," he says.
"We're applying drug design technology to generate polymeric scaffolds that specifically recognise the shape and electronics of the targeted molecule."
Despite new technology, airport sniffer dogs are unlikely to find themselves on the unemployment queue (Image: Reuters/Alessia Pierdomenico)
The technique has been used to identify cocaine and heroin and is being developed to pick up chemicals like TNT and triacetone triperoxide, the chemical used in last year's London Underground bombings.
"Instead of metal detectors we would have a bank of these sensors sucking the vapours off as you walk through," he says.
He says while sniffer dogs will still be able to go places electronic noses can't, sensing technology will be better able to detect specific substances.
Dr Michael Borgas, is an atmospheric scientist at CSIRO, which is developing an electronic nose to detect chemicals.
He says the future of airport chemical sensing lies in miniaturised devices.
Researchers at CSIRO are also looking to insects like fruit flies for inspiration.
"If you can understand how insects sense and act upon various volatile chemicals you'd hopefully be able to mimic that with electronic devices," he says.
"What you want is a hand-held device that can suck in tiny bits of air and detect the molecules that are in that air. In airports you'd just stick it in a [passenger's] bag."
Smart surveillance
Cebis says it will take more than high-tech chemical sensors, no matter how sensitive and discriminating they are.
"It's fine to have sensors all over the place but you've got to be able to make intelligent decisions," he says.
"The research challenge is to make cheap, sensitive, ubiquitous sensors coupled with smart surveillance technology."
Cebis says closed-circuit TV will eventually be replaced by "smart" digital video technology that uses biometric identification and motion recognition to hone in on specific individuals and behaviour.
"They look at a scene and if there's no motion they don't film anything," he says.
"Or a person may wander into a scene, deposit something and then move away. The fact that something was moving and now isn't [will be picked up]."
Ting Shan of National ICT Australia (NICTA) will outline advances in face recognition technology at a security technology conference in Canberra next week.
Shan says new face recognition algorithms have been developed by NICTA and University of Queensland that aren't befuddled by lighting, expression or angle of the face.
"It can synthesise a realistic frontal face image," he says.
Impact of a new security environment
Borgas says while the events in the UK have highlighted advances in security technology, he doubts they will be implemented overnight.
McCluskey hopes it will give governments an impetus to provide the research and development funds to allow some of the more promising ideas to bear fruit.
"Sometimes it takes an event of this nature to provide a significantly high profile and the government willing to take a chance on the technology," he says.
Cebis say all the technology in the world will never completely replace the most humble of checks.
"But whether they need to be as intrusive and time consuming as they currently are depends on the technology," he says.
