A customer-centric approach to CCTV

EUI. Every market segment is different regarding integrated surveillance systems, requiring different technical and commercial needs. With this in mind please explain why a customer-centred approach is important?
SH. The customer must first understand the issues impacting the business in order to understand which of these issues could be addressed using a video-based security system. Some issues may be specific to his installation (such as local geographical layout) but many are common throughout business environments.

Often the customer will need help in identifying which issues have the highest impact, and which can then be addressed through the use of technology rather than process change. A security audit is often a sensible undertaking to identify areas of high-risk or potential failure, and leads to the creation of the primary non-technical objectives of the intended security system.

For each type of risk or threat, the necessary combination of video surveillance and other security systems, such as intrusion detection or access control, can be determined and then included in the design. The likely combination of modern security systems will require the implementation of a multi-service network to allow full communications between the various components.

When considering which additional systems and equipment to utilise within the system, it is important to help the customer to filter out ‘technology hype’ and evaluate the real practicality and suitability of the products and services available. For issues common throughout the industry, it is best practice to visit similar installations and discuss the reasons for the chosen technologies in that solution.

Finally, one or more levels of redundancy should be considered for the system, so that surveillance is maintained in an emergency situation.

EUI. The M25 London Orbital is the hub of Britain’s motorway network, with 70,000 journeys made on it every day. Can you explain the importance of extended CCTV coverage in this area and the impact it has made to the motorway itself?
SH. The geographical importance and constant high traffic density on the M25 has significant implications for both road safety and business efficiency. The original analogue surveillance system left sections of the motorway without CCTV coverage, often causing the police to operate ‘blind’ when an incident occurred in these sections. This also affected the emergency services, which had to wait for a police patrol to arrive before a full assessment of the situation could be completed. Time, resource and money were being wasted and the possibility of a secondary incident was increased.

The Highways Agency therefore decided to extend CCTV coverage to the whole motorway and to increase the utilisation of the existing roadside fibres by using a digital network. This enabled the five police control centres around the M25 to observe potential hazards, employ pre-emptive measures and pass on the information and video to the adjoining control room. They could respond more rapidly to incidents and, by being able to quickly assess situations, deploy the emergency services more effectively. The system was designed to be extremely reliable and offered multiple layers of redundancy should a failure occur.

Financially, the first year rate of return on the Highways Agency’s investment equated to over UK£700,000. Surrey Police were able to reduce the number of police motorway patrol vehicles from nine cars to five and re-deploy this resource elsewhere. The police operators were able to direct the incident response units (IRU) more effectively, resulting in the average IRU attendance time being reduced from 1.5 hours to 20 minutes in 90 percent of incidents.

EUI. Can you explain your involvement with the National Roads Telecommunications Services (NRTS) and the innovative solution you have provided in this case?
SH. Over the past 40 years, England’s roadside communications networks have evolved to keep up with the expanding motorways and major trunk roads. However each new technology often required a new and dedicated network. The Highways Agency currently manages and maintains these communications networks and has stated that since these networks have evolved in a ‘piecemeal’ fashion, they manage and maintain 34 separate networks. These transmit video, voice and data signals from over 20,000 roadside devices to the 32 police control offices that serve the nation’s motorways and major trunk roads.

Because these separate systems cannot communicate and interact with each other, neighbouring police authorities cannot share data since they are typically using incompatible analogue systems, often from different manufacturers. 

It is against this background that the Highways Agency conceived the National Roads Telecommunications Services (NRTS) project. The primary aim of the NRTS project is to establish a single approach to communications on England's motorway network. Following the successful implementation of the M25 project, Telindus Surveillance Solutions Ltd was chosen to design, implement and support for 12 years, an IP switched CCTV system as part of the NRTS project.

The NRTS project will provide a national digital system eventually linking more than 6000 cameras, 14,000 message signs, emergency telephones and traffic monitoring systems to the Highways Agency’s network of traffic control centres. Whilst primarily designed to provide a road safety monitoring system, it will also give drivers real-time travel information to plan their journeys. In addition it will create safer roads, thanks to the nationwide distribution of CCTV footage to travel information organisations and the media. There is also the ability to view all cameras via webcam technology, thanks to a Telindus-designed software transcoding engine.

NRTS has allowed the Highways Agency to assume primary control of England’s road network, relieving the local police authorities from the time consuming task of traffic monitoring and control. Through the power and scalability of the Telindus management platform, the 32 police control centres have been converged into just seven regional control centres (RCCs), significantly saving on both infrastructure and manpower requirements. These seven RCCs are able to fully share resources allowing the efficient management of incidents (e.g. abnormal loads or vehicles), as they travel from one region to the next.

CCTV on the M25

•  The networked CCTV solution was designed around a fibre-optic dual ring digital network, with M-JPEG video compression, to provide a scalable virtual matrix over 112 miles long
•  Priority and sharing of critical information allowed video streams to be sent simultaneously to multiple destinations, allowing all emergency services to concurrently view an incident without the need for a central control room
•  This also allowed the Metropolitan police in the centre of London to view video from any part of the M25 and its connecting motorways
•  Having one network for video and telemetry control minimised installation, maintenance and training costs and provided a simple upgrade path
•  Digital compression allowed better utilisation of fibre capacity and therefore extended transmission distances.  

IP CCTV: looking to the future
With the recent adoption of networked video recorders (NVR) and the growing use of IP cameras in suitable CCTV projects, many of the future technologies are likely to concentrate on the reduction of recording and operational costs. New codecs such as H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) will allow broadcast quality recording whilst using considerably less disc space than MPEG-2. The following additional technologies will be used to add control and scalability to surveillance systems.

Video analytics: The use of video analytics is growing rapidly and will soon become a mainstream technology, once the issues of high price, scalability and the end-user’s expectations have been addressed. Video analytics can be broken down into the four categories: simple video motion detection, advanced video motion detection, object recognition and separation, and biometrics.

Currently, the true value of video analysis is not being realised but equally, further customer education is required regarding certain features (e.g. object separation) and false positives. The use of video analytics for ‘first-pass’ incident detection, with the operator making the final decision can save significant time, costs and manpower.

Meta tagging: This is the adding of text descriptors, such as the colour or speed of an object, to describe each frame of video. Meta tagging is a technology which is still very much at the bleeding edge, but is considered one of the most important features for future surveillance systems, bringing not only a significant increase to the speed of searching recorded video archives, but also the ability to search for previously unknown criteria.

Audio analysis: When used in combination with video analysis, audio analysis is also an emerging technology. Combined analysis systems are likely to be commonplace in public area security and surveillance applications within a few years.

The use of one or more of these technologies enables the most important future trend in surveillance, that of true integration and automation of networked systems. Automation enables the combination of inputs and data from many different networked sources and devices to be used to make simple decisions. This allows the efficient scaling of networked security and surveillance systems beyond the point at which it is cost effective to manage the system with security personnel alone.

About Simon Howes
Simon has worked for Telindus Surveillance Solutions (TSS) for seven years, with most of this time spent as Solutions Manager. In this role he had responsibility for the TSS product portfolio and video surveillance solutions within the Telindus Group. He has now taken on the role of Business Development Manager.