How police in Teheran sought to invest in a CCTV system covering all 30 police stations across the city.
Police in the Iranian capital of Teheran, a city of more than 12 million people, sought to invest in a CCTV system covering all 30 police stations across the city, linked to a central control room. The Iranian police, the NAJA, wanted to place colour cameras in each police station, and linking all the cameras over a city wide network into a central control room, giving both central and local viewing of the images. The communications methods used would be in part the existing police cable WAN, and in part new connections over wireless and microwave, using IP (internet protocol) transmission. Distributor Norbain reports that it knows of no similar police CCTV system around the world that combines an equivalent scale and complexity. The contract went to Teheran-based company Rah Roshd, using Vista brand products, for which they are the local distributor. One feature is the Vista?s Smart range of products feeding images to remote PCs over IP. The system centre on Vista?s SmartTel system. With the capability to send live video pictures over any of the common communications networks ? PSTN, LAN, WAN, ISDN, or GSM.
About the system
Each police station has six or more Vista cameras: VPC9130 colour and VPM8130 mono cameras. Signals are fed to a SmartTel PC, including Vista VLSLA and VLSTR units, which provides a console to control local viewing as required. Four larger traffic control centres are included in the network. Where there were gaps in the network, new wireless and microwave communications were used. The microwave and radio links were particularly effective in reducing an otherwise heavy communications cost for those stations not already on the network: the alternative of new cabling would have been prohibitive in the metropolis. The centre of the system at police headquarters, using the control room that houses Teheran?s 110 Centre ? the public telephone emergency system that is already a communications hub for the NAJA. The control room receives all image streams from the police stations, and uses SmartTel to manage the incoming feeds, viewing live pictures in full, quad or 10-camera view. The system offers audible notification of any alarms, archives all received pictures to hard disk and provides an audit trail as required. The timescale, and the buildings, proved problems. Many of the police station walls through which cables were being run were more than a metre thick, and the implementation plan allowed a very tight timescale of only one day per station. However, from goods clearing customs to system completion took only 40 days. This year?s launch ceremony was covered by national television, and attended by the President of Iran and the police commander. Nationwide implementation of the network will follow. This second phase will cover another 50 police stations.
