Database design for Physical Access Control System for nuclear facilities

A (Radio Frequency IDentification) RFID cum Biometric based two level Access Control System (ACS) was designed and developed for providing access to vital areas of nuclear facilities. The system has got both hardware [Access controller] and software components [server application, the database and the web client software]. The database design proposed, enables grouping of the employees based on the hierarchy of the organization and the grouping of the doors based on Access Zones (AZ). This design also illustrates the mapping between the Employee Groups (EG) and AZ. By following this approach in database design, a higher level view can be presented to the system administrator abstracting the inner details of the individual entities and doors. This paper describes the novel approach carried out in designing the database of the ACS.