High-tech companies are getting into the business of a reinvigorated technology known as smart CCTV in an effort to cash in on the desire of rail and mass transit operators to guard against terrorist attacks.

Instead of putting the burden of isolating suspicious behavior on security workers, the smart closed-circuit TVs can detect anomalies on their own and flash an alert.

“If you have people viewing cameras, it is like watching TV — they will get tired and you don’t know if they are going to miss something,” said William Morange, deputy executive director of security at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). “If you have an alarm-based camera, anytime there is a breach, then an alarm will go off and that camera will send the video back to whatever command center that you have manned.”

Closed-circuit TVs have been used by businesses for decades to transmit images to surveillance monitors. But since Sept. 11, software products have been developed to make the job of monitoring the monitors much easier.

By adding software and computer processors to existing CCTV infrastructure, the systems can be upgraded with an artificial intelligence designed to scan locations for unattended objects, unusual motion and certain kinds of human behavior. Some of the bells and whistles are even more cutting edge, such as heat sensors that could be used to read someone’s temperature from afar and possibly detect nervousness related to terrorism.

The technology holds so much promise that Cathleen Berrick, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office, recommended that the federal government consider researching it. She made the remark while testifying at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing in January.

Berrick and her team of researchers assessed the merits of smart CCTV by visiting 32 American rail and mass transit operators currently using some variation of smart CCTV, as well as some other operators overseas, including the London Underground and the Paris Metro.

Their findings included some observations from the New York City metropolitan area, which boasts the largest daily public transit and rail-riding population in the country.

New York’s MTA and Lockheed Martin Corp. signed a $212 million contract in August 2005 to put smart CCTVs in many of the city’s main terminals and some subway stations, according to Morange.

“It is working in various parts of the system because we want to see how it works in different environments,” he said. “We look at a lot of factors when we are putting these technologies in because at Penn Station you have got the subway system, you have got Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and you have Long Island Railroad. There are so many different variables and you know the amount of people that travel in New York.”

The MTA is hoping smart CCTV technology will give it a greater ability to control access to rail and mass transit facilities, stop intrusion and identify abandoned baggage and parcels, he added.

Lockheed Martin also has contracts to integrate smart CCTV technologies at facilities run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which includes a subsidiary rail system, known as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation. The Bethesda, Md.-based technology company would not disclose the value of the contracts.

In the smart CCTV arena, Lockheed Martin offers systems integration services for rail and mass transit operators and other clients.

After responding to a request for proposal, Lockheed Martin typically begins by assessing a rail system’s existing infrastructure and environmental challenges, as well as its risk and threat portfolio, said Dick Fogel, director of secure enterprise solutions at the company. Then analyses are run to see what products are available to meet the rail system’s needs and determine what the system could do without. A number of plans and are then presented to the rail operator.

Lockheed Martin generally oversees the installation and application of smart CCTV software and equipment after a plan is selected, although sometimes clients opt to acquire the software and equipment on their own and install it themselves, Fogel said. Sometimes the contracts are structured with a fixed price, and other times they have cost-plus structures meaning total costs can vary depending on the scope of the project

The contract with MTA is probably the biggest smart CCTV contract that has been signed by an American rail operator to date.

“From a transit authority standpoint New York is a big one,” Fogel said. “There aren’t any bigger than that in the United States.”

Fogel added that Lockheed Martin has also had talks with Amtrak about doing some smart CCTV business.

The New Jersey Transit rail system has also implemented smart CCTV software and equipment at some of their stations, although the company would not share any details about the technologies.

However, transit authorities in other parts of the country are also installing smart CCTVs in their facilities.

San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) recently finished installing and programming smart CCTV software at its San Ysidro Transit Center — the system’s second most trafficked station, which also is right on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Last year, MTS received $563,000 in light rail grants from the Department of Homeland Security. The system used $294,479 of the grant money to pay for smart CCTV software and system integration services from Cernium Corp. and Electro Specialty Systems Inc. respectively.

“We have about 16 cameras that are up at San Ysidro station that were installed . . . and that system does have the behavioral recognition software,” said MTS spokesman Luis Gonzalez. “We have heard a lot of positive things about it and now we are going to implement it and as time progresses, and if possible, we would like to implement some more. It is new software, but I think it is going to work out for us.”

Cernium’s software is programmed to detect 15 different types of suspicious behavior and has numerous modes that it can be set on, said John Terrill, a spokesman for the Reston, Va.-based company. The software also works with both analog and digital CCTV camera systems, he added.

Matthew M. Johnson can be reached at mjohnson@cq.com.