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U.S. Customs Bonded Warehouse Deploys Virtual Perimeter

By Claire Swedberg

May 13, 2010—In one of its bonded warehouses at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is employing active RFID tags to track the movements of individuals between a public storage area and a secured area. The system enables the agency to know when and where people cross a yellow line painted on the floor to delineate those two sections, as well as whether those individuals are authorized to do so. The system was provided by Axcess International. Due to interest from other organizations for a similar system, Axcess' president and CEO, Allan Griebenow, says his company is making the perimeter-crossing solution commercially available as part of its existing automated access-control and ID system, known as Dot Wireless Credential.

Bonded warehouses (also known as customs warehouses) store cargo pending the export or release of imported items that may require payment of duties or taxes. Part of the CBP's large warehouse at JFK Airport is open to the public, while access to the section for storing bonded items is restricted to certain airport personnel. The two locations are separated not by a physical barrier, however, but by a long yellow line, painted across the floor, that unauthorized personnel are not permitted to cross.

Axcess International installed RFID activators (which transmit an RF signal to awaken dormant active tags) and readers along the entire perimeter, and supplied its warehouse staff with ID badges containing Dot Wireless Credential RFID tags. This enabled CBP to track the identities of all individuals wearing the tags as they cross the perimeter, and to receive an alert if an unauthorized individual, wearing a tag with a unique ID number not listed in the authorized category, crosses the perimeter. More...

05-16-2010 20:33

Wristbands Document Interactions Between Prisoners and Officers

Hardin County Jail has upgraded its RFID system with high-frequency 13.56 MHz RFID wristbands, to track every officer-inmate transaction in real time.

By Claire Swedberg

Mar. 4, 2010—Lawsuits are one of most county jails' greatest concerns when it comes to record tracking. When inmates are injured, fall ill or commit suicide, a jail needs to be able to prove it provided all of the services it could offer prior to that incident, and that it was not in any way negligent. In addition, jails must meet guidelines set forth by government-run departments of correction to prove that services are being provided, and that detainees are being properly monitored. Thanks to RFID-tagged wristbands worn by its prisoners, Hardin County Jail, in Eldora, Iowa, now has a precise electronic record of what services each inmate receive, as well as their physical condition, throughout the day.

Initially, the jail's officers manually tracked each inmate using paper and pen, and input various details—such as that individual's recreation time, head counts and the specifics of any interactions—into the PC, to be stored in the facility's jail-management system. The problem was that the data was often passed through several officers, a great deal of time could elapse before it was entered, and there was no way to prove any stated interactions actually occurred. More...

03-06-2010 11:33

Strawberry Grower Deploys RFID to Fix Temperature Troubles

Sept. 9, 2009—Bionest, a Spanish grower of organic strawberries, is deploying an RFID solution enabling the company to view the temperature of the strawberries packed at its processing facility, as well as record temperature fluctuations in a truck while the berries are transported, and monitor the temperature in real time once more at a retailer's distribution center (DC) in Germany.

Temperature fluctuation of fresh produce during shipment is rarely transparent, and can result in spoilage. (The optimum temperature for strawberries is between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius, or 37 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit.) As a result, produce suppliers and retailers have had to accept a large percentage of produce that has become unsellable at some point between the time it was picked and when it reaches store shelves. More...

09-09-2009 13:48

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