Newport City Council has won a 2002 security client of the year award using Axis cameras.
Newport City Council beat other high-profile nominees such as HSBC and National Heritage with its network-based CCTV solution for securing 20 primary schools in the Newport area. This is the first time an IP-based solution (featured in Professional Security soon after installation in June 2000) has won the award. The Newport Community Safety Partnership initiative, which combined the council, Gwent Police and Axis Communications, put together networked surveillance of hotspots such as school roofs and buildings during after hours. AXIS 2400 Video Servers were deployed to distribute video images from CCTV cameras onto the network. The solution made possible alarm activation and relaying of video footage via e-surveillance software, which was supplied by Farsight, to a central monitoring centre on council property on a 24-hour basis. Phil Cox, principal consultant at Newport City Council said: “By taking advantage of the National Grid for Learning and IP-Surveillance technology, this project has delivered true benefits to the primary schools in the Newport area. We are delighted to have won this award and hope that other councils follow our example.? The Government’s National Grid for Learning initiative meant that fixed network lines were linked into the schools with a capacity of between 256 KB up to 2 MB. As these were only being used during school hours, the system used the excess bandwidth capacity during out-of-school hours to provide the network at no extra cost. Visit www.axis.com
