Theres the sexy scientific side to biometricsanalyzing distinguishing characteristics such as fingerprints and iris and voice scans to ascertain if people are who they say they are.

Then theres the less glamorous, yet equally important business sidethe spreadsheets, calculations and bottom lines that will determine if the security system is as cost-efficient as it is technologically savvy.

For three faculty members in West Virginia Universitys College of Business and Economics, its all about the bottom line when it comes to the nations security.

Tim Pearson, associate professor of accounting; Richard Riley, associate professor of accounting; and Virginia Kleist, assistant professor of management information systems, recently conducted a cost benefit analysis of a biometric system at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

We wanted to show that you could subject these decisions to financial analysis,Pearson said.We tried to quantify the benefits and the cost savings to see what the trade-offs might be. In this case, it was a win-win situation.

Scott AFB is home to the U.S. Transportation Command, Air Mobility Command, 18th Air Force and Air Force Communications Agency. The base employs more than 13,000 military and civilian personnel. Given its mission and large number of personnel, the base places a high premium on security access.

In 2003, Scott AFB participated in a pilot project underwritten by the Defense Departments Biometrics Management Office, acquiring a biometric system to control base access at the newly constructed Shiloh-Scott MetroLink rail station.

The biometric system consists of a hand geometry reader and personal identification number, or PIN . Users enter a six-digit PIN , which points to their enrolled biometric template, and place a hand on the readers platen. They gain access when the stored template and the hand on the platen match.

After a Scott AFB team concluded the system was sound, the Defense Departments Biometrics Fusion Center in Clarksburg contacted the Center for Identification Technology Research, or CITeR, to procure the services of WVU s business professors.

The Biometrics Fusion Center is the testing and evaluation facility for the Biometrics Management Office. CITeR, based at WVU , is a consortium of academic, government and industry partners seeking to advance the development of biometrics through applied research and training.

The relationship between the Biometrics Fusion Center and WVU reaches out to all the areas of expertise at the University,said Samuel Cava, BFC director.

Riley and Kleist visited the base to gather financial data, while Pearson helped with number-crunching.

WVU s researchers determined the biometric system at Scott AFB could potentially save the base about $412,000 over five years. They arrived at this figure by deducting the estimated $148,000 cost of the hand geometry system from the $560,000 in savings primarily from the redeployment of security guards.

Besides cost savings, the WVU team saw potential for improved security at the base by relieving guards of mundane jobs and reassigning them to more challenging tasks.

The system provides abest practicemodel for other military bases to follow, they concluded.

That conclusion is what defense officials were hoping to hear, Cava said.

This pilot study paves the way for future implementation of similar systems throughout the Department of Defense,he said.Biometric systems offer another layer of security to keep our service men and women safe.