Product engineers at a startup firm called Enpiction Image Technologies, in North Kingstown, have created a real-time video-enhancement technology to produce crisper surveillance videos. The potential uses: anything from monitoring bank lobbies to securing commercial airports.
Down in Newport, LiveWave Inc. makes digital video-security systems that can be controlled remotely. Last month, the three-year-old firm landed its largest government contract yet: a deal with Argonne National Laboratory that will use LiveWave’s system to guard against chemical or biological attacks in subways.
Over in Middletown, Systems Engineering Associates (SEA) Corp. is helping the Naval Undersea Warfare Center develop an underground fiber cable that acts as an acoustic trip wire, measuring noise to detect someone or something penetrating a secure perimeter. The technology could be used to protect public water supplies, guard commercial airports, or in a host of military applications.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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All three technologies had been under development prior to Sept. 11, 2001. But now – given a tighter focus on security nationwide – these three small businesses have become players in a broad industry ripe with growth potential: homeland security.
Local, state and federal agencies are expected to spend as much as $45 billion annually between 2003 and 2006 on homeland defense products and services, and large and small businesses alike are scrambling to cash in. Last spring, for example, Raytheon announced it is developing new homeland-security products and systems – such as a new fingerprint identification system for the U.S. Border Patrol – and said it plans to begin marketing some of those to civilian agencies like local police departments.
The move toward tighter security even has spawned a new national trade group: the Homeland Security Industries Association (HSIA). The Washington, D.C.-based group, created last month, will monitor homeland-security legislation and scan federal, state, and local requests for proposal for homeland-security procurement.
LiveWave, founded more than three years ago to supply solutions to the broadcast television market, increasingly is shifting its focus to government and corporate security. Its software allows personnel at law-enforcement or military agencies to view video and control multiple cameras from the same location in real time on standard PCs.
In August, LiveWave – whose technology was featured last summer in a segment on CNN – was invited by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) to demonstrate its wares at the Small Business Homeland Security Expo.
“A little over a year ago, these agencies didn’t think their critical assets were threatened,” said Peter Mottur, LiveWave’s president. “Now local, state and federal agencies realize they have to run around and cover all this ground. Our remote security technology maximizes their resources.”
LiveWave is helping Argonne create an early warning response system to safeguard public spaces from the threat of chemical terrorist attacks. LiveWave’s VirtualPerimeter product links Argonne’s emergency management software with existing cameras of in Washington, D.C.’s transit system. Emergency personnel, both locally and remotely, are then able to view video and control cameras via secure networks and respond faster if a crisis unfolds.
The pilot project in D.C.’s Metro system could be a harbinger for the small firm. If successful, Argonne expects to roll the system out to 14 major transit systems across the United States.
But despite the country’s sharper emphasis on security, funds for new technologies aren’t exactly flowing freely.
“I think Congress still has a lot to sort through with the homeland security office and figuring out a strategy for managing all these different agencies before authorizing federal funding for homeland-security technologies,” said Mottur, adding that his firm has not received any direct federal funding.
Enpiction Image Technologies launched its video-enhancement product, the IPM-1000, last month at the American Society of Industrial Security expo in Philadelphia. The module – compatible with virtually any analog video surveillance camera – improves the contrast and sharpness of images, enhances recognition and can pick up hidden features, according to Enpiction.
Security footage often must be enhanced later by a video-processing specialist to improve clarity, which can be expensive, said Chuck Anastasia, Enpiction’s vice president of sales.
Enpiction’s stand-alone unit – about the size of a chalkboard eraser – resides between the video input and output. It uses an image-processing algorithm that enhances contrast where needed but allows well-balanced images to pass through virtually unchanged.
The firm is targeting a huge swath of the security market: the more than 2 million security cameras now in use in the United States, Anastasia said. The product, which is priced at $550, could be used by transportation agencies, local police departments, municipal governments and the military, among other applications, Anastasia said.
“It gives the huge installed base of security cameras the chance to upgrade to digital-quality images without having to replace hardware,” Anastasia said. “We feel it has an application wherever a security camera is in an environment with insufficient lighting.”
Enpiction is a joint venture between Jordan Apostal Ritter Associates Inc., an engineering services firm in Quonset Davisville Port and Commerce Park, and a Wisconsin-based investor. The product is being developed at the firm’s headquarters in Quonset.
While law-enforcement agencies and the military are among Enpiction’s list of targets, the company could cash in on tightened focus on corporate security. The ASIS security expo drew more than 17,600 attendees this year – the largest attendance in its 48-year history and 32 percent more than the show a year earlier, according to the society’s spokeswoman, Vicki Contavespi.
