BEYOND THE FENCE: - FLIR.com - FLIR Systems

FUNCTIONAL COMPARISON MATRIXThe result of this study was a cost and performance comparison matrix. For the most part, asthe value and performance requirements increased, so too did actual capital costs. There wasone notable exception to this increase.In our simplest, feature-based scenario, the total system cost came to approximately $2.3 million(USD). Interestingly, in Scenario Two a similar, but much more optimized solution was achieved.However, that scenario resulted in a significant drop in capital cost. Scenario Three, which was amuch higher value asset than Scenario One, but offered an optimized design solution with considerablyincreased functional requirements, actually resulted in a capital cost not that much higher.Finally, most notably, the high value asset in Scenario Four predictably resulted in a much highercapital cost.SYSTEM PERFORMANCEAdditionally, system performance characteristics followed a similar pattern. Increasing levels ofsophistication and capability, still with Scenarios One and Three costing approximately equivalent.SENSOR PERFORMANCEAcross the scenarios different types of performance characteristics can be seen with a correspondingincreasing capability level. Significantly, in Scenario One, which doesn’t have a veryfavorable evaluation, it costs just about the same as Scenario Three which has a significantlyimproved capability across the various performance matrices.14 15