Home About Subscribe via Email or RSS Feedback Your Letters Resources Current Edition
View by Topic
Current Edition
Subscribe to Digital Forum

To receive periodic email or RSS alerts when new content is published, subscribe to Digital Forum.
Subscribe via email
Subscribe via RSS

Or sign up for the Careers Newsletter.
E-mail this link to a friend Print React Bookmark
Emerging Technologies
miSense is LIVE at London Heathrow As a Trial in Simplifying Passenger Travel
Accenture’s leadership in making biometrics commercially available and useful has been put to good use in a trial at London’s Heathrow Airport. Run under the auspices of the Simplifying Passenger Travel Group, the trial leverages Accenture Technology Labs' Travel Security Services, a solution based on biometric identification. The trial, also known as miSense, aims to demonstrate how biometrics can improve air travel security and make air travel significantly more convenient.

The pilot is running on Emirates flights to Dubai and Cathay Pacific flights to Hong Kong, and is designed to test two schemes. Get the inside track on how each of the schemes works:
miSense is LIVE at London Heathrow As a Trial in Simplifying Passenger Travel
Guest Traveler
This scheme is aimed at demonstrating passenger reconciliation between entrance and exit at the airport. It begins with an identity check performed at the airline check-in kiosk. In this self-service environment, the traveler captures an image of her passport photo page, and a fingerprint. She then presents her fingerprint and boarding pass at a fast-track gate for priority access to security control when going airside. Finally, she presents her fingerprint on a handheld device at the boarding gate for priority boarding. The benefits include:
  • Security—the same traveler who checked-in boards the right plane.
  • Efficiencies and cost savings for the airport, airline and border control agency.
  • Faster, priority service to the traveler.
Registered Traveler
This is a rather more ambitious part of the pilot, designed to evaluate the use of biometrics more broadly by creating an international, federated Registered Traveler card.

For this part of the pilot, the traveler’s biometrics are loaded onto a card which is then used in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Dubai. The card acts like a second-generation e-passport, and holds more biometrics—namely fingerprints and iris images—than the first generation of e-passports that are being issued today, and enables accelerated, self-service processing at departures and arrivals in the participating countries.

Registered travelers can then jump the security filter queue by using an automated gate that verifies their fingerprint and boarding pass to allow them into the departure lounge.

It seems that the age of biometrics may just be dawning. Said Liam Byrne, UK Immigration Minister: “Biometric ID systems are fundamental to securing our borders in a more mobile age. They are crucial to our plans for counting everyone in and out of the country. This proof of concept shows just how well the technology can work.”
March 2007
E-mail this link to a friend Print React Bookmark
© Accenture All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Use | Global Meritocracy Statement | Privacy Statement
Articles on this page do not represent investment advise and are not endorsements of any featured products.
 
Suche
Section
Keyword
Search
For the latest news and views on technology.