WIDE-AREA SURVEILLANCE SECURITY SOLUTION PROVEN TO REDUCE RHINO POACHING

The CSIR has developed the next-generation ground-based surveillance and classification radar that enables automated detection and classification of movement over a wide area, enabling proactive protection of wildlife and other security applications.

With the insights gained from Meerkat 1, the CSIR developed the Ground-based Surveillance and Classification Radar (GSCR), a next-generation system. The radar is an automated, wide-area surveillance system that can pick up human movement – distinguished from animals and trees  – and generate an alert that would see intruders caught before they can do harm. The system has been experimentally deployed in the Kruger National Park. The GSCR system is also suited to other security applications, including large critical infrastructure protection such as power or production plants, farms and safeguarding of protected border zones. The system utilises the CSIR’s C-Band phased array technology, providing a flexible and upgradeable architecture with no moving parts, as well as a powerful artificial intelligence radar-based target classification research base. Radar provides the ability to observe all movement over a wide area, updated every few seconds. Intruders are detected over the entire area being protected and tracked so that security forces can be directed to intercept them. No operator is needed: The system operates fully autonomously and performs automatic classification of detected targets, enabling an automatic alarm. Over five years, the technology has seen ongoing refinement – and successful deployment.