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RUNWAY TECHNOLOGY February/March 2016 airportbusiness 31 of dollars in damage every year," Ehl said. "The frequency of FOD-damage is very, very low, but the consequences are very, very high and historically, it's been one of the few elements that airports have little control over. So this is breakthrough technology in an area that hasn't received much focus in the past." It's been difficult to quantify the amount of damage caused by runway debris at SEA, which is operated by the Port of Seattle and is ranked as the 13th largest airport in the United States, with 37.5 million passengers in 2014, Ehl says. That's because when an aircraft reports damage, it's difficult to determine if it occurred upon take-off or landing at another airport. "We've had incidents where a carrier will land and there's fan-blade damage, but there's no way of knowing if it occurred here or hours before while taking off," he points out. "We find pieces of aircraft out there quite frequently. They've never caused any problems, but only because we've been lucky." Nonetheless, Ehl says he's certain that the RunWize technology will make operations safer. A primary reason for his optimism: The system provides continuous monitoring, which is more comprehensive than the prior detection system, which relied on four daily visual inspections of each of the airport's three runways. "Visual inspections are just cursory and can't detect threats as well as an automated system, which gives you continuous vigi- lance versus periodic human surveillance," he explained. "We do four (manual) inspec- tions a day, but there are roughly 250 opera- tions between those physical inspections, so a change in conditions can happen at any point and leave you vulnerable in between those visu- al inspections." Along with increasing safety, the system also can boost efficiency by reducing the num- ber of wasted trips operations specialists make to verify pilot reports of runway debris. In turn, that will decrease the number of costly run- way shutdowns required to allow those visual examinations, says George Thuemling, the FOD program manager for Varec. All this technology does not eliminate the human factor, Ehl points out. "Certainly, we still need both (people and technology)," he said. "But rather than closing a runway based on a pilot's report, then going out there and finding nothing, we'll know if there's something out there before a plane even takes off. This is a belt-and-suspenders approach that increases odds of detecting something before an accident occurs." TIMING IS EVERYTHING SEA officials have been looking into installing a debris-detection system for more than a decade; the earliest technology relied on a tower-mount- ed radar. They kept waiting for the technology to fully develop and become more affordable. The need to rebuild the center of the airport's three runways, originally built in 1969, offered a perfect opportunity to invest in the detection technology, Ehl noted. "Before this, the timing just wasn't right," he explains. "In 2008, when we built our new- est (third) runway, we were already consider- ing the FOD-detection technology, but it hadn't advanced to the point where we could incorpo- rate it, so we didn't do it. But when we decided to rebuild the center runway, all the stars finally aligned with the technology being advanced enough and both the airport commission and the airlines feeling comfortable with incorpo- rating it into the runway project." The $80 million runway project was funded by a $25 million grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and airport development funds, he said. The runway-rehab project enabled the airport to install the detection sys- tem more cost-effectively, as opposed to retro- fitting the technology onto an existing runway. "It offered an elegant solution because the cameras and radars are incorporated into the runway edge lights," Ehl explained. "We saved some money because we were able to use com- mon conduit. And we were rebuilding the run- way anyway. If we had to retrofit an existing runway, that's a whole different ballgame." RADAR-AND-CAMERA DETECTION The system's cameras and radar rely on sophis- ticated detection algorithms to sense and pin- point the location of runway debris. In inclem- ent weather, just the radar-detection portion of the system operates; in good weather, both technologies work in tandem. The basic aim: An object is spotted on the runway by the detection software. Port of Seattle An image captured and identified on the runway from the software. Port of Seattle