Industry Vertical
Securing Every Parking Space
When you’re at work, there is someone watching your vehicle
- By Mary Wilbur
- Aug 26, 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.
The New Haven Parking Authority 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,
Granite Square 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 weatherprotected,
covered parking, and many are connected
to the facilities they serve. Garages are regularly patrolled
by New Haven Parking Authority 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 increased technology and better security in our
parking lots.
“The number 1 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 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.”
Palombo, principle at DVS Security Consulting &
Engineering, wanted to make sure that Park New Haven
was able to modernize all their parking facilities
with a best of breed product. He also said choosing
a camera and VMS was a team effort with people at
Yale Hospital and at the consulting firm.
The Air Rights Medical facility provides about
2,600 parking spaces, most of which are taken by staff
at the hospital. Park New Haven manages around
9,000 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,” Palombo said. “There are
command centers at both the hospital and at Park
New Haven, which allows all buildings to be integrated
and communicating with each other.
“The automated systems provide remote operating
capability, and it allows the 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,” he said.
System 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 thermal imaging cameras for reliable
detection in darkness and other
challenging conditions, and now relies
on a dedicated security network system.
Emergency call system: This was
a wholesale upgrade of the call system
from an analog system to a full
IP digital solution, which included
bright, LED illuminated lettering and
a customized stainless steel, weatherresistant
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 with 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 CompleteView, Dynamic
Resolution Scaling reduced 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, Palombo 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,” Palombo said. “We use
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 September 2015 issue of Security Today.