IP Video Powers Mobile Surveillance System

  • Mar 20, 2008

An integrated IP video solution is being used to provide the CCTV surveillance system for a Community Safety Vehicle operated by the London Borough of Waltham Forest, UK. The vehicle is a joint initiative between the Borough, the Metropolitan Police and NCP, the council’s parking enforcement contractor.

The vehicle is equipped with five fixed cameras and two fully functional Forward Vision MIC cameras mounted on a 20 ft hydraulic mast and an automatic license plate recognition system connected to the Police National Computer for live verification. The system is controlled by two onboard operators that each use Control Center, IndigoVision’s IP video and alarm management software, running on a dual monitor workstation to view live and recorded video from the cameras. All recordings are made by an onboard IndigoVision NVR with hot-swappable hard drives. The vehicle is supported and maintained by IndigoVision’s local partner Clearview Communications.

A third Control Center workstation is located in the Borough’s Editing Suite at the local Council offices, where video from the onboard swapped hard drives is saved and analyzed. Control Center provides a comprehensive set of analytics and tools to allow fast analysis and retrieval of recorded footage. Video clips can be exported for evidential purposes using sophisticated encryption and watermarking techniques to ensure the material is tamper-proof.

“The Community Safety Vehicle allows us to target areas not covered by fixed CCTV installations and areas that suffer traffic congestion and parking violations,” said Mario Demetriou, the Borough’s Anti-Social Behavior Manager. “IndigoVision’s ‘Control Center’ software really makes the job of analyzing the video easy, both onboard the vehicle and back at our editing suite.”

The vehicle is typically used during the day by NCP for traffic enforcement and in the evening and during special events by the police for surveillance operations. On a typical day the vehicle can detect up to 100 traffic violations that result in fixed penalty charge notices being issued.

Each analog camera on the vehicle is connected to an IndigoVision rack-mounted 8000 transmitter/receiver module. The 8000 converts the camera feed to DVD quality digital video for transmission over the onboard IP network. The 8000 can also run real-time analytics such as virtual tripwire which, for example, can alert an operator and automatically start recording when a vehicle crosses into a bus lane.

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