Milestone Open Platform Video Integrated with Omnia Traffic Management for Galway City
Galway City is thriving – one of the fastest growing areas of Ireland with a population of more than 75,000. A seaside destination with beautiful beaches and long promenade, it has a cosmopolitan city center and thousands of college students. The labyrinthine, cobbled streets, colorful shops and busy cafes are buzzing. The city is also known for many festivals throughout the year with huge crowds gathering for the annual Galway Arts Festival, races and other events. Old Ireland is present with traditional music in many pubs. To manage traffic for all of this activity, the Galway City Council is using Milestone XProtect Enterprise video surveillance software.
Ciaran Hayes, director of services, Galway City Council said, “We’ll be using this system for a whole range of different purposes, the main one being to keep traffic moving around the city. Because Galway has been so successful, we’ve had a threefold increase in car ownership in the city, and that obviously brings its own stresses and strains in a city where we have a medieval street pattern and network. This video system gives us the capacity to be able to service the city, to make sure that the volumes of vehicles that we have traversing the city, on a daily basis, can do so as efficiently as possible.”
The video solution was installed by Ocean Electrical, an Advanced and Professional Certified Milestone Partner, through GVD, a Certified Distributor of Milestone and specialist value-added partner for the UK and Ireland.
“The system also gives us the opportunity to service the main industrial areas, particularly to the east of the city where we have thousands of cars coming and going daily. This allows us to gather data which we never had before. On certain routes, for example, we know now that there’s a car every three seconds, which is a phenomenal amount of traffic. Now we can plan for the future and that particular route itself,” added Hayes.
In the Galway City Council control room, Milestone XProtect Smart Client manages the display of all cameras across a large, video wall, including pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) for detailed views of live and recorded video. Milestone Mobile has proven perfect for supporting staff using tablets and smartphones.
The open platform of Milestone XProtect video software also enabled integration with Omnia traffic management software to control city-wide traffic lights and message boards.
“With all the lights linked to the system, we are able to prioritize certain routes to make sure that the main ones get priority traffic, both in the early morning and the evening rush hours,” continued Hayes. “We have very good messaging signs, and we’re able to use those to provide information to the general public. For example, if we have an incident where there’s an accident, an oil spill or whatever, we’re able to put advance warning signs out to the traveling public.”
Milestone is now the video management software of choice for Galway City.
“We will also be building on real-time passenger information for those who are using public transport. It’s about providing information to the public itself,” Hayes concluded.