From our continuing series of articles on using your organisation’s networks for security management purposes, case studies of a hospital and a local authority using their existing networks for CCTV monitoring purposes.
Broadly speaking, network CCTV offers cost and technological gains to the security manager in larger, more complicated systems. So we reported last month from a seminar at IFSEC by IndigoVision and partners. This month we go a step further by reporting how a local authority has used an existing wide area network to link five separate CCTV systems. The benefits’ Low running costs, more efficient use of staff resources by centralizing CCTV monitoring, and better image quality. Oh, and less crime.
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Midlothian, south of Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh, is largely rural. The area’s small towns suffer from petty vandalism, theft and drink-related crime. Council CCTV systems have been in operation in several urban public spaces for several years. Midlothian Council has developed its CCTV services with IndigoVision’s partner, Visual Management Systems (VMS), a UK-based developer and supplier of video transmission systems.
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The cameras have only been linked to the nearest local police station, and have proved an inefficient use of police and council resources. On Friday and Saturday evenings the authorities was simply not worth the cost of a member of staff watching the cameras covering one small town centre. The police felt it was better to have extra officers on the beat. Hence the local authority decided to consolidate CCTV monitoring at its Midlothian House headquarters. That meant linking the 38 cameras in the area’s five main towns: Dalkeith, Danderhall, Penicuik, Loanhead and Bonnyrigg. With IndigoVision’s VideoBridge technology the council was able to use of its existing wide area network (WAN). In Danderhall, for instance, this meant putting in a small cabinet in the corner of the local library. This is linked to the town’s four cameras and, in turn, to the council’s WAN. Running costs for cameras attached to the WAN are negligible because there are no dial-up charges for the system. When CCTV monitoring is most in demand, such as Friday and Saturday nights, it is unlikely that there will be any other data traffic on WAN. At Midlothian House, the same workers who administer standby housing repairs and the community alarm scheme are able to keep an eye on the monitors, ready to report incidents to the local police. Images from the CCTV cameras are stored on hard disk for 28 days before being overwritten. The maximum allowed by law is 31 days. If necessary, images can be burnt on to CD or put on tape for court use. Midlothian’s facilities manager Gordon Macleod who is responsible for the council’s CCTV monitoring, says: ‘The police tell us that as soon as the defendants know they’ve been caught on CCTV they usually put their hands up to it anyway. It’s unlikely that any of our staff will actually have to appear in court.’ The next stage could be providing a CCTV link for the central police station. That would allow the member of council staff watching the CCTV to pick up the phone to the police and tell them which camera to look at to see where a suspicious activity was taking place.
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Like many UK hospitals, New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton has a large campus with access to large areas always available to staff and public alike. Car parks are vulnerable to petty crime and car break-ins. Common areas and corridors in the buildings too have to be monitored, especially in accident and emergency, and maternity areas – particularly relevant in the light of a recent baby abduction from the Wordsley Hospital in the West Midlands. New Cross, part of the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, has 834 beds and serves a catchment area of 300,000. Its 20 departments provide round-the-clock coverage. Installers Evolution (Electronic Security Systems) won the contract for CCTV digital recording and transmission products over the hospital’s wide area network (WAN). The problem: how could seven areas of the site record and monitor their own departments, but also be managed by a central location and control desk – which needs to be relocated at some point’ The proposed system had to communicate near real-time video over the existing 1Gb WAN to enable tracking of suspects on site. Images provided from the digital recorders at one image per second were considered too slow (because of potential image latency from movement of a joystick to the image appearing on the screen). Thus a secondary link was provided to allow real-time telemetry control and video over the same WAN. Exterior fully functional dome cameras and fixed cameras in several departments and wards provide the images that will be recorded on seven Multiscopes and viewed on a video wall of 12 PC monitors in a central place. Recorded images will also be reviewed there. Real time monitoring is segregated from the digital recording function, with the benefit that security staff do not need to have PC experience to operate the system and track people. The digital solution and ethernet transmission ensures an affordable security installation, Evolution say. No more continual tape changing and maintenance. Digital recording lasts up to 28 days before automatic erasure, a requirement of the Data Protection Act. The mix of Geutebrueck Multiscope II, BBV telemetry control and Videobridge transmission equipment provides the answer do not call for new cables. The solution has the capacity to expand as the hospital expands. Russell Fitz-Ragan, the project director, says: ‘Trying to design a solution that met all the requirements yet fell within the budget made the project an interesting challenge. Without the use of up to the minute technology, we couldn’t have done it.’
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Brussels International Airport has more than 14 million passengers passing through its gates a year, besides frieght. The airport is expanding, opening a second terminal. The airport sought a CCTV system to allow police, fire services, baggage handlers, customs and health and safety officers to monitor images for various purposes, including security of luggage, passengers and freight. More than 600 digital cameras across 3,700 acres simultaneously record images 24-hours. The system has come from CCTV manufacturer Baxall, integrated by ENI. Baxall’s Destiny IP range of products has used IndigoVision’s VideoBridge technology to compresses video allowing distribution of images over standard IP networks. The digital format means that footage can be viewed, stored, searched, copied and analysed as easily as any other digital file. Using IP-based cameras means Brussels can ‘plug and play’, receiving live digital video anywhere on the network at once. The airport reports reduced costs and simplified installation and management. The cameras support bi-directional multicast audio that can be used within a PA system or as a point-to-point device for two-way communication. Dominic Oughton, Managing Director at Baxall, said: "With this new IP based CCTV system, Brussels International Airport is really investing in the future. It is both highly flexible and scaleable, so no matter how plans for the airport may change in the future, the CCTV system will be able to adapt to them."
