In a trial with the Swedish Air Force, Knowit tested whether fiber-optic sensing could tell an operator not just that something moved along an air base perimeter, but whether it mattered.
Movement along a perimeter fence is worth detecting. It is also worth understanding. At an air base surrounded by woodland, activity near the fence can have many causes, and presenting every observation with the same urgency would leave operators with more to sort through rather than a clearer picture of the site.
That was the challenge Knowit set out to explore together with the Swedish Air Force in a trial of Yggdrasil, the company's platform for turning large volumes of sensor data into prioritized detection and classification in security-critical environments.
The system analyses data from fiber-optic sensing to detect activity near the fiber. Through Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), existing fiber infrastructure can be used as a sensor over long distances, and at the base, the team tested how it could identify movement along the perimeter and turn those detections into something an operator could use.
Wildlife was an expected part of the environment. To improve the model's training data, the team mounted a wildlife camera along the fence, its images providing visual examples of animal activity to set alongside the sensor data. With further training, the team's models could distinguish wildlife from people.
The team also tested activity at the fence itself, including climbing. It is tougher than it looks, especially with spiders crawling everywhere, as they found out firsthand. The hands-on tests helped examine the events that matter most at a perimeter, including a possible crossing.
Detecting movement, however, is only part of an operator's job. The next question is how to present it. An operator needs to see where an event happened, what the system has identified, and whether it may warrant a closer look, with supporting details available when needed rather than every detection competing for attention on the main view. The trial and the Air Force's feedback guided the team's work in classification, perimeter events, and clearer alarms.
"We are very pleased with the trial project conducted together with Knowit. It has given us a clearer picture of what the technology can do and how we might develop it further together to explore other applications within the Swedish Air Force," says Stefan Lövgren, at the Swedish Air Force.
The project gave both parties a better understanding of what fiber-based perimeter sensing can offer in a defence context, and what it takes to make that information useful in practice. For Knowit, the continuing aim is to give operators the information most relevant to their work first, while keeping the fuller picture within reach.
"The project confirmed what we want Yggdrasil to do: give operators clarity, not just more notifications. We are continuing to develop it together with our users, and the approach scales from a single perimeter to much larger sites, from critical infrastructure to defence," says Andreas Nilsson, Business Unit Owner, Knowit's defence solutions.
Want to know more about Yggdrasil, or discuss possible use cases in critical infrastructure, security or defence? Contact Andreas Nilsson at andreas.x.nilsson@knowit.se to continue the conversation, or read more about the technology here.