In Scotland, the booming local economy of the Glasgow metropolitan area has meant that large numbers of companies have been drawn to the region in recent years, many of them to new business parks on the outskirts of the city.
These locations require surveillance and patrols to guard against break-ins, fly-tipping and thefts.
Security contractors The Corps have designed and had built a new national CCTV remote monitoring facility in Glasgow. Commissioned in December 2006 and fully operational since March, the control room staff can monitor systems utilising a number of CCTV transmission systems and to have all of these operational at any time.
At the heart of the control room’s video switching capability is a Zandar FusionPro+ 3RU MultiViewer. When an alarm is triggered at any of the locations served by the facility, the system automatically selects and displays an image from the nearest CCTV camera on a 42-inch TFT display, or on one of five LCD spot monitors located on operators’ desks. The FusionPro+ 3RU has been integrated with an Avocent KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switching system.
What they say
Bill MacGregor MCSE, CMC Technical Manager at The Corps, says: "When it came to designing the control room we consulted with the National Security Inspectorate to ensure that the best and most reliable available technology was used, and that the design was as robust as possible – it has been built to the BS5979 standard. There are up to four operational staff in the room at any one time for 24/7 monitoring. Depending on the job and the time of day, staff can alter or manipulate the display configuration using Zandar’s standard Z-Configurator software, directly from the operator desks. The system design also makes use off the FusionPro+’s Clock Display feature, to ensure that all the desks are perfectly synchronised."
Integrated are local PA/VA and access control systems. "The CCTV images are captured on IP cameras and networked to the control room using broadband-enabled receivers," says MacGregor. "The aim is to detect any disturbance at any of the sites connected to the control room, with manned guarding and police monitoring both the interior and the exterior of buildings."
Commenting, Deirdre Smith at Zandar Technologies says: "This latest installation in the security sector is a further vindication not just of the ruggedness of our display processing products, but also their flexibility and their ease of use. It perfectly illustrates our mission to provide video display solutions that integrate existing and emerging technologies, and offer a variety of configurations, input format options and output display possibilities."
