CCTV for Bridges
Among the greatest accomplishments of human civilization are bridges. bridges have served as lifelines while inspiring the imaginations of people from early primitive structures where logs were simply positioned across streams to the long, arched spans from the Roman civilization that still stand today, to the modern era’s engineering work of art.
Bridges enable communication and transportation in times of peace. On the other hand, bridges take on strategic value in times of war. The destruction of bridges has heavily contributed to the outcome of armed conflicts throughout history.
The report released by the White House on February 2003, titled “The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets,” identifies the close relationship between the many segments of the economy and the nation’s transportation infrastructure. Transportation and nearly every other sector of the economy have always and will continue to depend on each other from many aspects. As a result, threats to the transportation operations affect other industries that continue to depend on it.
Similarly, the highway infrastructure has vulnerabilities which must be addressed as pointed out by a FHWA’s 2003 document, titled “Recommendations for Bridge and Tunnel Security”. This issue is so crucial that many individuals would like it to be addressed among the policies of national security. The improvements in homeland security must address enhancements to vital tunnels and bridges.
The forefront of highway infrastructure saw little change until the Department of Homeland Security initiated the Surface Transportation and Reliability Act in 2003. On the other hand from the time when the landmark policy shift, DHS has taken far-reaching measures to identify the security needs of the U.S. highway infrastructure, including those of more than six hundred thousand bridges located all throughout the US.
As a result, the FHWA, allowed state departments of transportation to recommend projects to win the grant and, for the first time in history, they gave the whole grant to a sole bidder which was the Florida Department of Transportation and its valued offer for the iFlorida project.
Security Control and Administration
Security Command and Control is the name of the model bridge security sub-project, it mainly focuses on developing video/software-based recognition systems for two critical Florida bridges, one in the Jacksonville area and one in Orlando.
FDOT awarded the Security Command and Control contract to MasTec North America Inc. after realizing that they had a clear picture of what they wanted and who could best help them to achieve their goals. The Director of MasTec’s Intelligent Transportation Systems sector turned to security consultant for guidance in product specification and Metric Engineering for help with plans deployment.
DVRs at field locations capture video footage caught by the cameras at any given instant. The streaming video is sent back via a fiber-optic infrastructure to be monitored at separate TMCs for redundancy as well as maintaining the local recording procedure. Once an alarm is triggered the DVRs at the TMC begin the recording process. The bridges of Jacksonville and Orlando are supervised by operators at both TMCs, as well as by the Florida Highway officers.
The locations selected for this case study are intentionally different although both bridges cross the channels of major waterways. For instance, the Jacksonville Bridge is particularly urban with underpasses and major intersections to take into consideration. On the other hand, the Orlando area bridge is distinctly rural and most of the traffic below is related to boats. As a consequence, the equipment selection and security goals for the two bridges vary remarkably.