Comprehensive screening of baggage and parcels in aviation checkpoint, air cargo, customs and other critical infrastructure sites is a requisite in today’s era of security mandates and terrorism risks. At the same time, the management and operations personnel in these environments are constantly struggling to have the most efficient and cost-effective processes in place to minimize negative consequence of the required security screening activities. For example in airports checkpoints, primary screening lanes with a secondary stations for manual resolution of potential threats can translate to long lines, slower throughput, increased passenger irritation, and lower screening operator efficiency when checkpoint flow is slowed down or stopped due to a potential threat identified in a scanned object that now needs to be put through secondary inspection. As well, relying on verbal communication alone between primary and secondary checkpoint staff can turn into inefficiencies and time-wasted in the re-inspection activity and means higher labor and staffing cost requirements.
Rapiscan Systems’ Multi-System Network Display Station (NDS) enables security professionals to more efficiently manage the primary and secondary inspection process, improving the continuous flow of baggage and parcels, while still ensuring a thorough threat detection procedure at the screening site.
When the Multi-System NDS is added to the screening lane manual search station, the X-ray scanner transmits the X-ray image of a bag’s or parcel’s contents, with the location of the suspicious objects marked and annotated by the local operator, to the secondary NDS display. The manual search operator can then reconcile the scanned baggage or parcel X-ray image with the contents of the actual bag or parcel. By providing the manual search operator with the marked and annotated image to quickly recognize the search area in a suspect baggage or parcel, the NDS simplifies and improves the throughput of screening procedures and improves the communication between personnel responsible for different yet related tasks. With the NDS, security operations are able to improve the passenger and customer experience, make interoperability between security personnel more convenient and effective, and facilitate management of labor and staffing expenditures.