Technical Models

The team found that modeling and simulation were required to understand the performance characteristics of such a complex system and to demonstrate how a designer would design and tune for a particular application’s unique biometric inputs and stakeholder goals. A hypothetical application was developed based on open-source literature searches of yearly immigrant travelers arriving and exiting the US and DHS current and planned use of biometric systems in US international airports and along the US borders.  It was found that face images, Fingerprints, and Iris images are currently being collected either as part of the DHS US-VISIT full-scale operational program or as pilot studies.  It was further found that the biometric process begins during the visa application process. 

Arena® was used to model the flow of transactions through our system for the high-level flow. To tune our system and determine proper computing and human staffing resources, we tracked performance metrics of interest to our stakeholders

Match Accuracy

  • Percentage of Unusable Images
  • Percentage of Matches Found
  • Percentage with False Matches

Match Transaction Throughput

  • Hourly Transactions

Match Result Response Time

  • Average Response Time (in Minutes)
  • Maximum Response Time (in Minutes)

You can see the model run by clicking here or on the image to the right.  

Click here or on the image below to view our technical models.