The Glasgow Science Centre has upgraded their ageing analogue/VCR CCTV with IP video. The 49 camera system was installed by IndigoVision’s local partner SCS Security Design.
Steve Ross, the Centre’s Exhibition and Technical Services Manager said, “Glasgow Science Centre has seen a considerable improvement in operational efficiency since installing IndigoVision’s CCTV system. This has greatly assisted with several security issues that have occurred since the new system was installed.”
At the heart of the centre is the Science Mall, a gleaming titanium crescent overlooking the River Clyde, which has three floors of interactive exhibits. Next to the Science Mall is the 127m Glasgow Tower, the only building in the world capable of turning 360 degrees into the prevailing wind. The aerodynamic structure allows the entire building to be turned to face the wind, thus reducing wind resistance and enabling its slender design.
The original analogue system used VCRs for recording CCTV footage. As with the majority of VCR-based systems it was a major overhead for the security staff to continually rotate tapes and access recorded footage. The IP system now provides the Centre with CCTV that provides video recorded onto Network Video Recorders (NVRs). Using ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Security Management Software, operators can view live video and search and analyse recorded footage from the NVRs. In the event of an incident, evidential quality video clips can be exported for use by the police. Four of IndigoVision’s fault-tolerant stand-alone NVRs, with a total of 6TB of storage, record all cameras continuously at 25fps for 31 days.
IndigoVision’s compression technology means that DVD-quality video can be transmitted across standard IP networks with it’s claimed minimum impact on bandwidth. This enabled the centre to install the complete IP Video system on their existing LAN, sharing network capacity with other IT services.
The centre is also using the Activity Controlled Framerate feature (ACF) built into IndigoVision’s transmitter modules. It controls the amount of video that is transmitted on to the network. When the camera scene is inactive, the framerate is reduced; as soon as any motion is detected the framerate is instantly set to maximum.
The centre is investigating the use of analytics functions such as ‘counterflow’ to monitor their queuing system and ‘museum mode’ to detect left luggage and illegal parking.
The distributed nature of the system means that additional components such as cameras and monitoring workstations can easily be added to any point on the network as the system expands. There are plans to add 25 cameras to the system.
