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FSM


Feature


Casting a Wider Net: More effective Mass Screenings for Stadiums and other venues


Detecting weapons of mass casualty before terrorists get too close. Written by Jim Viscardi.


Live events at large venues like arenas, stadiums or convention halls – whether they involve your favourite football team annihilating the opposition 6-1, Coldplay starting a new tour in the United Kingdom, or a convention involving anything from politics to food to technology – are exciting affairs that channel the camaraderie of the crowd into a powerful collective energy.


But they also are vulnerable to threats


Terrorists and other malefactors have known for centuries that any large gathering of people has inherent vulnerabilities on which they can prey: Crowds make it hard for security to keep track of any single person or spot unusual behaviour, and the number of people congregated in one space amplifies the impact of any attack. In recent years, organisers of large


events have augmented the security methods they use to protect a venue, using both walk-through metal detectors and hand wands, and deploying K9 and


18 FSM


police units to patrol the lines to enter security. But these current methods share a universal flaw: to be caught, evildoers have to be on the verge of actually entering the venue with hundreds of other people, which means they can still cause a massive amount of destruction.


Current methods are not enough Conventional walk-through metal detectors are a compromise between effective screening and high throughput, as they successfully detect metal objects, but only can screen about five or six people each minute. They are generally placed 10 to 20 metres from a venue’s front façade, either just outside or just inside, to screen people as they enter the facility. Hand wands are used for anyone that sets off the walk-through detector as a secondary screening method for confirmation. Many facilities also use observational methods to screen, such as drones, CCTV, security officers or police walking the crowd and looking for suspicious


behaviour, or explosives-sniffing K9 units patrolling the area. Each of these methods has intrinsic


limitations. Observational security methods are just that – observation- based, not detection-based. They rely much more heavily on human factors that introduce greater degrees of error and chance, and positive visual identification of a suspicious threat requires a relatively close proximity to observe the threat. They’re also slow and laborious. Walk-through detectors and wands


will catch someone trying to enter a facility with a weapon, but by the time they do, it may be too late – a terrorist will already be well within proximity to do a lot of damage. Bad guys don’t need to actually enter the venue; they just need to get close enough to injure or kill a large number of people. That can happen – and has happened, such as with Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 – right at the security point, where a terrorist will be surrounded by dozens or hundreds of people and 10 to 20


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