Skip to main content

Flir thermal sensors aid police in capturing Boston bombing suspect

Last Monday morning two bomb blasts went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. By Friday night the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was in police custody. After he survived a gunfight with police and slipped out of a dragnet, Massachusetts State Police finally spotted him via a thermal imaging technology manufactured by Flir.
April 23, 2013 Read time: 1 min
Dan Dietrich of FLIR
Last Monday morning two bomb blasts went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. By Friday night the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was in police custody.

After he survived a gunfight with police and slipped out of a dragnet, Massachusetts State Police finally spotted him via a thermal imaging technology manufactured by 6778 FLIR.

Flir thermal sensors can see clearly regardless of lighting or weather conditions. The suspect was hiding in a boat, under a tarp, but the thermal sensor was able to provide a clear view because it could detect his body heat.

“The technology used to view the bomb suspect is the same Flir technology used in traffic management,” says Dan Dietrich, Flir business development manager for traffic & ITS.

For example, Flir thermal imaging can be used in automated incident detection, pedestrian detection and bicycle detection.

Flir thermal imaging is a combination of Flir's 165 thermal sensors and an algorithm optimised for thermal imaging by Traficon, which was acquired by Flir in December.

%$Linker: 2 Asset <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 4 77400 0 oLinkAsset <span class="mouselink">www.FLIR.com</span> www.flir.com false /EasySiteWeb/GatewayLink.aspx?alId=77400 false false%>

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Navtech’s new CTS350-X set for Swedish roads
    March 24, 2014
    Navtech Radar, the specialist manufacturer of radar-based automatic incident detection (AID) solutions, is unveiling its latest CTS350-X radar at the show. The unit is smaller, lighter and easier to install and commission than previous models and its response time for detecting a stopped vehicle and sending an alert is less than 10-15 seconds. It is suitable for automatic incident detection on bridges and strategic roads and in tunnels and covers up to 1,000m of road surface (500m radius) and detects people
  • Delcan demonstrates state of the art ATMS at ITS World Congress
    October 11, 2012
    Delcan International Corporation will feature its Intelligent NETworks (iNET), a state-of-the-art ATMS application designed to collect, disseminate, and manage transportation information. Built with scalable architecture, INETworks is an adaptable solution for small and large scale deployments. The software is divided into 25 different modules that control different aspects of the traffic system. Customers build their customised systems by using Delcan’s core modules. It is designed to support both standard
  • Flir online training in September
    September 12, 2016
    Flir’s traffic webinars during September provide an introduction to the TrafiOne smart city sensor for traffic monitoring and dynamic traffic signal control. TrafiOne uses thermal imaging to detect the presence of pedestrians and cyclists that are approaching and waiting at the kerb or using the crossing. What’s new in FLUX 3.0 looks at the new features of this video management system, which collects traffic data, events, alarms and video images created by a wide variety of video detection modules. Th
  • Econolite uses ITS world Congress to highlight travel time software
    October 11, 2012
    Econolite will use the ITS World Congress to highlight its Centracs Adaptive and Travel Time software modules. Centracs Adaptive is designed for transportation agencies seeking to significantly improve traffic mobility over pre-programmed signal timing plans. It actively reallocates and adapts signal timing to improve traffic flow, including unpredictable or unexpected traffic conditions. Centracs Travel Time module enables Centracs ATMS to subscribe to BlueToad travel time and speed data to provide both hi