DHS develops biometric tools to improve traveler identity verification

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has developed two biometric identity technologies designed to improve screening performance, reduce identity ambiguity and support faster traveler verification as biometric processing expands across airports and border checkpoints.

Airport biometric checks for crossing borders, accessing secure areas and boarding flights are expanding steadily throughout the U.S. Expansions include the TSA’s plan to bring Touchless ID biometric entry lanes to 50 airports this year and an installation of biometric eGates from dormakaba for boarding at DFW by American Airlines.

DHS says slow data acquisition and retrieval, failures to extract biometric data and matching inaccuracies are shortfalls of biometrics that decrease screening throughput and erode user trust and satisfaction.

Benchmarking biometric performance

The “Biometric Data Collection and Verification System” (BDCVS) collects identity information, such as from a passport, captures multi-modal biometric data, matches the person and measures transaction time. Users are surveyed about their satisfaction with the system.

The use of multiple biometric modalities will eliminate acquisition errors, according to the document describing the BDCVS. The match rate, transaction time and user satisfaction data can all be compared against the performance thresholds the system is required to operate within.

Resolving ambiguous identities

The “Biometric Identity Disambiguation” (BID) system calculates the biographic similarity of information from a scanned ID captured at an access control point to identity records as a percentage. Biometric data collected at the same time is also compared against reference data, and a second similarity score is generated to confirm the individual’s identity.

The goal is to decrease how long it takes to vet ambiguous biometric data and increase screening throughput by correctly identifying people with common or erroneous names or other biographic characteristics.

Each of the systems refers to technologies protected by three different patents.

The former was invented by Arun Vemury of DHS S&T’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center, and the latter by Vemury and Daniel Boyd, a systems engineer with TSA.

DHS considers both to be proven systems, and they are seeking licensing partnerships through the DHS Technology Transfer and Commercialization program.

Article Topics

airport biometrics  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  DHS  |  DHS S&T