Advancing the State-of-the-Art in Transportation Security Identification and Verification Technologies: Biometric and Multibiometric Systems

This paper updates and expands upon the research work presented by the authors in "Evaluation of Biometric Technologies for Access Control at Transportation Facilities and Border Crossings". Biometric technologies are being tested and deployed in a variety of transportation applications at the national, state, and local levels – border crossings, transportation worker credentials, real IDs – biometric-enabled driver's licenses and identification cards, and facility and computer access control. A discussion of the current and planned deployment status for the biometrics technologies is provided. An overview of existing and emerging physical and behavioral biometric technologies is also presented. Single biometric systems are applicable in low to moderate security applications. As security needs increase and terrorists and criminals gain more expertise in biometrics technologies, unimodal systems may not be sufficient. Multibiometric systems fuse together the data and features of unimodal systems and can provide higher levels of security. A well-planned and designed multibiometric system is potentially more accurate than the best unimodal system. An overview of multibiometric systems and their design issues are covered. Also, key evaluation techniques for biometric and multibiometric systems are presented.