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IP Video – Meeting the Needs of the Transport Industry

Oliver Vellacott, CEO of IndigoVision, describes how IP Video is offering the transport sector unique solutions to its surveillance needs.

The threat of terrorist attacks in recent years on transport infrastructure has led to a demand for high-quality and reliable CCTV surveillance that can be continuously upgraded to meet the growing threat. IP Video is providing the CCTV industry with a unique set of tools for solving today’s surveillance applications. This is particularly true in the demanding transport sector where IP Video is providing many solutions that are not technically possible or economically viable with traditional analog CCTV systems. The many features and benefits of IP Video can be best highlighted by looking at a number of field-proven case studies.

Munich Airport: Hybrid IP-Analog Systems

Munich is one of Europe’s fastest growing airports with nearly 30 million passengers expected through its two terminals in 2006. In accordance with new EU regulations all airport employees are required to undergo the same security checks as passengers when entering the secure airside area, consequently Munich Airport undertook a security reconfiguration of its staff access points. This included scanners, security arches and CCTV surveillance, for which Munich airport chose IP Video technology.

The IP Video system was installed in both Terminals alongside the existing 1800 camera CCTV system. The furthest camera was located over 2.5km from the central control room, the main monitoring point for the airport’s entire surveillance system. The system was interfaced to both the existing digital MJPEG system in Terminal Two and the analog matrix system in Terminal One. This allowed users of the existing CCTV systems to have access to the images from the new secure access areas.

IP Video was an ideal choice for this application as it provided high-quality MPEG-4 CCTV images from cameras located over a large area of the airport and a flexible interface path to the existing hybrid mix of CCTV systems. Extending the existing systems would have been far more expensive and would not have provided the same level of scalability for the future. The new IP Video additions have brought many benefits to the airport, but have also ensured that the original investment of CCTV equipment was protected.

SkyTrain Light Rapid Transit System: Maintaining Investment

TransLink in Vancouver, Canada is about to embark on an upgrade to the 880 camera CCTV system on SkyTrain, the world’s largest automated light rapid transit system. SkyTrain transports 200,000 passengers a day along 49km of elevated track through 33 stations located in and around Vancouver. IP Video technology will be used to upgrade the existing analog matrix/VCR CCTV system and provide a scalable solution that will meet SkyTrain’s video recording and future surveillance needs. The new system will allow the recording of much higher quality video and provide station operators with tools to quickly access and analyze recorded footage – important features to meet the demands of homeland security.

Choosing the flexibility of an IP Video system enables SkyTrain to keep most of their original investment in the existing CCTV equipment, while creating a platform for future growth. All the original 880 cameras will be re-used together with the existing matrix switching hardware. At each of the 33 stations the cameras will be connected to IP Video transmitter/receiver units. These will convert the analog camera signals to high-quality MPEG-4 digital video for transmission over the local IP network at each station.

Standalone Network Video Recorders (NVRs) will be installed in each station to provide advanced recording facilities for each camera stream. This will create a hybrid digital/analog CCTV solution that will provide a replacement for the ageing VCR-based recording system. In the long-term, the flexibility of IP Video will allow SkyTrain to benefit from the power of a fully networked system by deploying a virtual matrix to replace the existing analog switching.

Doha International Airport: Integrating CCTV and Access Control over IP

As part of the preparations for DOHA 2006, the 15 th Asian Games, Doha International Airport (DIA) in Qatar installed a fully integrated system consisting of over 600 cameras and 200 access control points. The ‘GE Secure Perfect’ access control system was seamlessly integrated into the IP-CCTV system to provide a single security solution.

The entire system is IP-based using the airport’s LAN and provides a high level of flexibility and scalability. A CCTV camera or access control point can be located at any point on the network. The alarms from both systems are monitored via the IP Video management software. This is the ideal place to consolidate alarms from an integrated IP-Security system as CCTV is the application most monitored by security staff. The IP Video management software allows operators to monitor live video feeds and recorded footage from the Network Video Recorders (NVRs) as well as status information and alarms from the access control system.

The tight integration of the access control and video management allows the virtual matrix to be driven by alarm events, e.g. a salvo of cameras can be displayed when an alarm is raised from a given access point. Events within the video management software are generated and logged for card swipes, illegal access and tamper detect.

Adelaide Traffic System: A Migration Path to IP Video

The challenge facing the traffic monitoring system around Adelaide in South Australia is typical of many analog CCTV systems worldwide – the prohibitive cost to expand the system. This is why IP Video technology was chosen to provide a migration path to a fully digital CCTV system. South Australia’s Department of Transport had been looking to improve their traffic monitoring systems and recognized that IP Networked Video was the future for CCTV surveillance.

The South Eastern Freeway Tunnel was chosen as the first project and was a good example of how IP Video technology can be deployed as part of a migration strategy. The existing CCTV cameras in the tunnel were connected to transmitter/receiver units. These converted the analog video to MPEG-4, 25fps 4CIF high-quality digital video for transmission over a newly installed fiber-based network.

It was important that these new additions were seamlessly integrated into the existing CCTV system and that the configuration of the Norwood Traffic Control Center, situated 15km from the tunnel, initially remained unchanged. To achieve this, further transmitter/receiver units were installed in the Traffic Control Center to convert the digital video from the network to analog, which was then fed into the existing matrix for crosspoint monitor switching. The only difference the operators saw was the significant improvement in the quality of the video from the tunnel cameras.

This project illustrates the simple migration path an IP Video solution can provide. Existing analog cameras and matrix/switching equipment can be used to allow new digital video signals to be integrated into existing configurations. Eventually the analog matrix can be replaced with a “Virtual Matrix”, using video management software, and cameras can easily and cost effectively be added to any point on the network.

Dutch National Railway Network: Remote Monitoring with IP

NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen), the Dutch rail authority, is one of the world’s busiest rail systems with 25,000 employees operating over one million passenger journeys every day. NS is currently operating over 385 full service rail stations throughout the Netherlands and running approximately 5000 train journeys every day. To protect so many stations, it was neither practical nor cost effective to locate CCTV monitoring staff at every station and so a centralized remote monitoring system was developed.

A nationwide fiber network had already been put in place alongside to the rail network and so an IP Video solution was the obvious choice for CCTV surveillance – providing high-quality video, low video latency and a future-proof architecture. It was important that the operators could not tell the difference between the digital video and equivalent analog images. Low video latency also ensured effective camera PTZ control, even across the large distances between the remote monitoring centre and the stations. NS were keen to embrace future technologies such as analytics so future-proofing was also an important requirement.

Over a period of 18 months IP video equipment was installed in 12 stations around the network, with the largest single installation being 96 cameras. Over the coming years the system will be expanded to accommodate more and more stations.

IP Video technology will eventually allow NS to monitor all of its stations from a single central control room. This brings with it huge advantages in terms of security, passenger safety, network maintenance and staff costs. This project simply would not have been economical to implement using analog CCTV systems.

Turku Port, Finland: Wide-Area Surveillance over IP

The Port of Turku, Finland’s second largest seaport, has invested in a complete end-to-end IP Video solution to provide an innovative approach to site surveillance. More than four million tons of cargo and over four million passengers pass through the port every year and safety and security are paramount to the port’s operation.

The CCTV system includes numerous dome cameras, providing high-quality digital images via a wireless LAN, which spans an area around the port of over 10km 2 . The cameras provide surveillance for the main entrance, parking lots, the port’s rail network, the docks and the approaching seaways. In addition the port operates a mobile CCTV vehicle that provides flexible surveillance quickly and easily to any area around the port. The vehicle is based on a standard saloon car and is fitted with a range of environmental sensors, for measuring parameters such as radioactivity and toxic gases, as well as a wireless CCTV camera and monitor. Should a large or unusual ship enter the port the vehicle can be dispatched to monitor the event in areas that are not covered by the fixed cameras.

The wireless IP Video system resulted in considerable savings for the port operator compared with a traditional analog CCTV solution. The combination of wireless and IP Video provides an ideal solution for site-wide monitoring of large areas.

Amsterdam Airport: IP-based Analytics

Schiphol, Amsterdam’s International Airport, is using advanced IP Video analytics to prevent accidental or malicious intrusion onto runway and hangar areas. With over 20 million passengers passing through the Netherlands’ busiest airport each year, the airport operators were keen to deploy the latest technology to help improve the safety and security of aircraft movements.

The analytics algorithms run in real time at the camera ensuring that operations staff in the dedicated control room are alerted automatically to intrusions as they are detected. This ensures a timely response to any potential emergency or security situation.

Seventeen fixed CCTV cameras cover the active airside area of the airport and these are connected back to the control room via a hybrid fiber and wireless LAN. The analytics mode ‘Virtual Tripwire’ is used to designate unauthorized areas in each camera’s field of view. Whenever a vehicle or person crosses into these areas an alarm is automatically raised and the appropriate camera view is displayed in the control room. It was not possible to implement such a system using traditional analog video systems, because of the distances involved and the need to use real time analytics.

Video management software allows the operations staff in the control room to view live and recorded video from any of the cameras. All video is recorded on two Network Video Recorders (NVRs), providing up to 14 days of continuous real time recording. The operations staff can also run the same analytics on the recorded video for post-event analysis.

The LAN is based on an existing fiber network installed within the airport building which was extended using a fault-tolerant wireless mesh network. The furthest camera is located in excess of 1km from the control room.

Summary

The overriding feature of all these case studies is the huge distances over which the systems are deployed, whether it is the long distances of a rail or road network or the wide areas associated with airports and ports. Cost effective and reliable CCTV surveillance over these distances can only really be achieved using IP Video. The case studies show that IP Video can co-exist with legacy systems and provide a simple migration path for the future, an important benefit for end users considering an IP Video solution for their application.

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