Securing Your Car
When you’re at work, there is someone watching your vehicle
- By Mary Wilbur
- Aug 01, 2015
Chances are, when you picked a parking place this morning, you
weren’t thinking about security in that facility. Thankfully, however,
there are those people who think about everything, including
providing a secure environment in a parking garage.
Park New Haven, the city of New haven’s public parking provider,
proudly serves the people of New Haven, CT, and its visitors with more than
8,000 economical public parking spaces at the Air Rights, Crown Street, Temple
Medical, Temple Street, Granite Square, Gateway Community College and Union
Station garages. They also secure numerous surface parking lots conveniently located
in downtown New Haven, and in surrounding residential neighborhoods.
It is a good chance that security is top of mind for New Haven parking officials.
Garages offer weather-protected, covered parking and many are connected to the
facilities they serve. Garages are regularly patrolled by Park New Haven security
officers trained to look for potential problems including vandalism and public disturbances.
“Our security team has spent hours going over the system we planned to install,”
said David Panagore, the executive director of Park New Haven. “Our goal
has always been to provide the folks in New Haven with better technology and
improved security in our parking lots.
“At the Air Rights Garage the Number One priority for us was to upgrade the
systems that were not working and update the old analog system. The Air Rights
parking facility is next door to Yale-New Haven Hospital, and that’s where we
started with the new IP cameras.”
In order to protect the investment in existing Axis Communications cameras,
and to ensure the quality of the video, Park New Haven relied on its security consultant,
Al Palumbo, to recommend the right VMS to carry the load. He recommended and installed Salient Systems
CompleteView.
“Air Rights Parking Garage was
looking for a product with an intuitive
interface because it was important
for their users to be highly productive
right away,” said Brian Carle, director of
product strategy at Salient Systems. “Access
to no-cost online training was also
a key consideration, which allows Air
Rights to get new users up to speed on
system features and capabilities rapidly.”
Palumbo, principle at DVS Security
Consulting & Engineering, a division
of Ross and Baruzzini, wanted to make
sure that Park New Haven was able to
modernize all their parking facilities
with a best of breed product that also
met their needs. He also said choosing
a camera and VMS was a team effort,
which included people at Yale Hospital
and Park New Haven.
The Air Rights Garage provides
about 2,600 parking spaces, most of
which are taken by Yale new haven Hospital
staff and patrons. Park New Haven
manages around 8,000 spaces citywide.
The garage itself has been operational
for many years, and DVS Security has
been working on the garage for decades.
In this particular case, DVS engineers
designed the drawings and specifications
to implement the cameras, and suggested
what VMS system should be used to
power the video traffic.
“We believe what we have installed
brings added value to the customer,”
Palumbo said. “There are command
centers at both the hospital and at the
garage and the new security design has
allowed for integrated communications
between the two.
Automated systems provide remote
operating capability, which allows
parking and security to work together
with the guidance systems. The system
provides a high level of security without
a massive work force. One person
can do the job of many and get very
good results.
System integration, scalability and
administration had been key concerns
for Air Rights. Salient’s CompleteView
has a health monitoring and centralized
administration tool that allows operators
to see the camera, NVR and user status
for the entire system on one screen.
“Performing system administration
and updating for all NVRs and video
viewing clients centrally is another benefit
which dramatically reduces time,
system maintenance tasks and the complexity
of software updates,” Carle said.
Park New Haven also upgraded its
emergency call system, installed an integrated
guard tour system, included
Axis fixed, PTZ and thermal imaging
cameras for reliable detection in darkness
and other challenging conditions,
and now relies on a dedicated security
network for the IP security devices to
communicate.
Emergency call system: This was a
wholesale upgrade of the emergency
call system from an analog system to a
full IP digital solution, which included
bright, LED illuminated lettering and
an enlarged customized stainless steel,
weather-resistant enclosure that the enlarged to ensure prominent display.
Access control: A new Software
House access control system integrates
guard tour features to provide guard
tour safety routes within the access
control system, instead of using and
maintaining a separate system.
Thermal imaging cameras: For
sensitive areas requiring video surveillance
in very low light locations and to
reduce vandalism, burglary and false
alarms, Axis special thermal imaging
cameras were used.
Dedicated security network system:
In order to support the large amount of
data produced by the video, access control
and intercom and emergency call
systems, a dedicated security network
system was designed, including a Cisco
core switch.
Using Salient Systems’ Complete-
View, Dynamic Resolution Scaling reduced
the load on the network when
transmitting live video.
“Dynamic Resolution Scaling also
reduced load on the client systems displaying
live video in the video monitoring
room,” Carle said. “The net effect:
video call up is faster, the system
is more responsive and they are better
prepared to respond to security events
in real-time.”
Real-time activity is crucial in this
setting, though Park New Haven has
never had a critical emergency in the
garage. It could be because DVS recommends
their customers employ the
best of breed equipment, and it could
be due to their experience designing
security systems for such high-profile
buildings as the World Trade Center,
the President Bill Clinton Library and
the United Nations, among others.
In choosing a VMS to power the security
system, Palumbo said he took a
very long look at Salient Systems and
found it simple to follow and easy to
use. He said it was a very straight forward
installation, and that, while it
integrates with all major camera manufacturers,
CompleteView has an especially
deep integration with the full
Axis line of network cameras.
“We’ve been designing for the security
needs of Park New Haven for
the past 30 years,” Palumbo said. “We
specify the best equipment for the job,
and we expect those products to be reliable
and provide what the customer
needs and wants.”
This article originally appeared in the August 2015 issue of Security Today.