The Greater Lafourche Port Commission’s new system, developed through a collaboration of several companies, is comprised of disparate data sets, incident management, “what if?” analysis, CCTV integration, video analytics, and alerting integration. Soon, the Harbor Intrusion Detection System (Waterside Radar) will be integrated as well.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission, in partnership with national security firm Crescent Guardian Inc., completed implementation of a video analytics application to accompany its next-generation video surveillance system. This will allow first responders in Port Fourchon to receive “as they happen” alerts identified automatically by the surveillance system and coordinate their response in real time. This level of data sharing and interoperability is unprecedented and will aid in lowering response times and overall situational awareness during real-time events, placing the port’s security among the most advanced in the nation.

The Greater Lafourche Port Commission’s is committed to continually improving the security and emergency response preparedness of Port Fourchon by building a Maritime Domain Awareness System that allows local, state and federal agencies such as Harbor Police, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, LOOP, Lafourche Parish EOC, Fire Central Dispatchers, GOHSEP, Department of Defense, Customs, and Coast Guard to collaborate effectively and become more proactive.

To do this, the port’s director of information technology, April Danos, wanted to find a way to take all technologies and disparate data and bring them into one common operating picture that would allow these several agencies to work collaboratively within the same situational awareness platform over multiple networks.

Crescent Guardian Inc., a partner security firm of the port, developed a solution by providing advanced software that could run the new surveillance system for Fourchon’s Maritime Domain Awareness System, or GLPC-C4. The software allows the system to send alerts and alarms if anomalous behavior is detected, meaning there are no rules to be written prior to their use.

“The Port Commission was pleased to work with CGI to integrate BRS Labs’ video analytics into Port Fourchon’s Video Management System and the GLPC-C4 System,” said Danos.

The U.S. Department of Defense supported Port Fourchon’s efforts by sharing the DoD-developed capabilities of the Knowledge Display and Aggregation System (KDAS) to serve as the basis for the Port’s incident command and control system. The use of KDAS provides Port Fourchon with the unique ability to network its system with the DoD in the event of an incident requiring information sharing.

Crescent Guardian Inc. serves both public and private entities, including federal, state, municipal, commercial, energy and critical infrastructure, as an advanced security firm with a portfolio consisting of security integration, video surveillance, video analytics, electronic tracking, access control, project management, training, asset management and armed/unarmed guard services.