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BEUMER ECAC Standard 3 Whitepaper

BEUMER ECAC Standard 3 Whitepaper
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Author: Christoph Oftring ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ECAC3 ON BAGGAGE HANDLING SYSTEMS – CONSIDERATIONS FOR UPGRADING EXISTING ECAC2 SYSTEMS WHAT ARE MULTI-LEVEL SCREENING AND ECAC STANDARDS? THE EVOLUTION OF ECAC STANDARDS ECAC standards was made mandatory for all airports in 2007, and in September 2014, European airport security underwent a major change. After that date, all newly-installed equipment going forward must adhere to ECAC’s new Standard 3. The approved screening machines employ some kind of CT technology at the primary level 1 device. The European Civil Aviation Conference’s (ECAC) Standard 3 threat detection test is the highest standard set by ECAC for the detection of explosive threats in passenger hold baggage. ECAC Standard 1: Dual Energy X-ray and single operator image; set the base line data for Probability of Detection and False Alarm Rate. Standard 1 has been in use since January 2002 and was made mandatory for all airports in 2007. Multi-level screening is a fundamental requirement of the ECAC regulations. The idea of screening bags at different levels is to be able to screen and approve the majority of the bags as fast as possible. Bags that fail the screening process are diverted from the main flow and moved to another screening level where further, slower manual investigation is undertaken. The in-line multi-level screening approach set out in ECAC Standard 3 is designed to be able to screen the baggage in-line, faster and more cost efficiently. ECAC Standard 2: Dual Energy X-ray, dual operator images; specifies that for the X-ray unit the Probability of Detection must be higher than Standard 1 and the False Alarm Rate must be lower than Standard 1; image quality parameters, resolution, wire detection, steel penetration, organic/non-organic discrimination. ECAC Standard 3: Dual Energy X-ray + Computed Topo raphy g (CT) technology, single operator image; specifies that for the Xray unit the Probability of Detection must be higher than Standard 2 and the False Alarm Rate must be lower than Standard 2; image quality parameters, resolution, wire detection, steel penetration, organic/non-organic discrimination (very close to US TSA standards for BHS). This whitepaper examines the impact the changes have on existing ECAC2 baggage handling systems and how to implement the necessary changes.

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Figure 1 Comparison of ECAC Standard 2 system with a proposed ECAC Standard 3 system HOW DOES ECAC 3 AFFECT EXISTING SYSTEMS? An ECAC Standard 3 BHS system would incorporate just one level of screening machines and therefore removes the need for additional stage processes of previous ECAC Standard 2 fivelevel BHS systems in which the primary detection technology would normally be a dual-source x-ray machine operating at level 1 with CT (computed tomography) technology at level 3, as can be seen in figure 1 above. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THE ECAC 3 STANDARD? The main changes specified by...

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Check-In-area 1 (1200 bph) Check-In-area 2 Check-In-area 1 (1200 bph) (1200 bph) Check-In-area 2 (1200 bph) Level 3 Automatic EDS machine operating at 200-240 bags/h Check-In-area 3 (1200 bph) Check-In-area 4 Check-In-area 3 (1200 bph) (1200 bph) Check-In-area 4 (1200 bph) Level 1 Automatic EDS machine operating at 1200-1500 bags/h Level 2 Image from the level 1 machine is sent to an operator Figure 3 ECAC Standard 3 Multilevel screening (3 level) Level 4 Image from the level 3 machine is sent to an operator X-RAY level 1 (1500 bph) X-RAY level 1 (1500 bph) X-RAY level 1 (1500 bph) X-RAY...

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In a typical Standard 3 system, during screening, security operators have 60 seconds of variable decision time to determine the status of a bag without interfering with bag flow before the system clears the bag for the sortation system or sends a suspect bag for manual process. In general, the Standard 3 system dramatically improves the baggage screening and evaluation process by reducing the rate of rejected bags and combining levels 1 and 3 into one level. The reduction in process levels does away with the need to install conveyor equipment at levels 3 and 4. The operator at level 5 now...

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