Wireless IP Video Helps Caribbean City Crack Down on Crime

  • Aug 11, 2011
The City of Lamentin, located on the French archipelago of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, has used an IndigoVision city-wide wireless IP Video solution in its successful bid to reduce crime. Situated near the Guadeloupe National Park, Lamentin’s 16,000+ residents enjoy a good quality of life, blighted in certain areas with low-level crime. The need to combat anti-social behavior, graffiti and the local drugs trade led the City authority to install a state-of-the-art surveillance system.

A key requirement for the City was to have a scalable system that could be quickly and easily installed without any disruption or major city works. An IP Video system operating on a wireless network was therefore the ideal solution and IndigoVision and its authorized partner, Acsyss Antilles, were chosen for the project. This decision was taken as the city had already experienced a successful installation of an IndigoVision system at the local Technical High School and the technology is uniquely suited for deployment on wireless networks.

The ability to stream high-quality, low-latency video across wireless networks is all about minimizing the bandwidth used. IndigoVision’s distributed architecture, advanced H.264 compression technology and the unique Activity Controlled Framerate (ACF) feature enables it to deliver outstanding performance across low-bandwidth wireless links. Acsyss installed a city-wide mesh system with 50Mbps throughput supplied by leading wireless vendor Luceor.

Positive results were seen as soon as the system was deployed. Even though the Technical High School has its own surveillance system, areas outside the school were causing problems for the authorities, with graffiti and assaults being a particular issue. As the Director of the School commented, “placing a camera monitored by the police at the exits of the school has deterred many offenders and we have seen a significant reduction in the violence and graffiti.”

IndigoVision’s distributed architecture allows any component (camera, video workstation and video recorder) to be located at any point on the wireless network. This has allowed both the local municipal police and the Gendarmerie to monitor and control the system from their own video workstations, even though the two control centers are located nearly 2 miles apart. The flexibility of the system means that it can be expanded to cover other areas of the city cost-effectively in the future.  Expansion can also be temporary, allowing the city to install additional cameras during special events such as the annual ‘City Party’ festival.

All of the cameras installed are IndigoVision’s 9000 IP PTZ domes, fixed domes and fixed cameras, connected directly to the network, further reducing installation costs. Real-time analytics and ACF can be enabled in the cameras. ACF controls the framerate of the video stream based on the amount of motion in the scene. When there is no activity, video is streamed at minimal bandwidth; the instant any motion is detected, video is simultaneously transmitted at maximum configured framerate. This feature, unique to IndigoVision, significantly reduces the bandwidth and video storage requirement for cameras monitoring generally static scenes or during quiet periods, such as at night. The City is also looking to deploy analytics in some cameras to automatically detect illegally parked cars.

IndigoVision’s standalone Network Video Recorders (NVRs) located in the municipal police headquarters store video from all of the cameras in the city-wide system for a minimum of 30 days. Analysis tools in ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Video Management Software, allow operators to quickly locate relevant footage in the event of an incident. Evidential quality watermarked video clips can be exported for use by the police for investigations and prosecutions.

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