A HOMEGROWN SOLUTION FOR KEEPING PORTS SAFE

摘要

THE DUBAI PORTS World affair sure touched a nerve in the U.S. over the vulnerability of domestic ports to terrorist attack. Although U.S. authorities thoroughly inspect the 5 percent of cargo containers they identify as high-risk, only 45 percent of all containers pass through the most accurate radiation scanners. U.S. ports needn't be so vulnerable. At the Port of Hong Kong, a pilot program scans every container of cargo at two terminals of the megafacility with sophisticated radiation and gamma-ray screeners. Since late 2004 the setup has generated 1.4 million digital profiles of outbound containers at the port, the second busiest in the world behind Singapore. The big irony is that Hong Kong's port is using American technology. San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., a 7.2 billion dollars research and engineering company that does systems integration work for the U.S. government and is readying an initial public offering in 2006, designed Hong Kong's Integrated Container Inspection System (ICIS). The 10 million dollars system can scan nearly 400 container trucks an hour and provide real-time data to help identify suspicious cargo, all the while keeping detailed records of what passes through the port.