University Of Miami Medical School Turns To IP Video For Security Upgrade

  • Jan 16, 2008

A complete end-to-end IP video solution is being deployed at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as part of a campus-wide CCTV upgrade.

The university’s medical campus spreads out over 45 acres in downtown Miami but it also has a number of remote sites, including one that is 100 miles north in Palm Beach County and another which is home to the new Miami Institute for Human Genomics, located 25 miles southwest of the medical campus. This type of wide-area application was too demanding for the existing analog CCTV system, leading to many operational problems. However, by adopting IndigoVision’s IP video solution many of the difficulties were overcome and much of the original CCTV infrastructure was re-used, including all of the cameras.

The ongoing project is being installed by Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies Miami Office and will eventually encompass all of the Medical School’s 300+ CCTV cameras and use Control Center, IndigoVision’s video and alarm management software for viewing live and recorded video.

The system uses 15 Control Center workstations, one in the main security control center, others at satellite security stations around campus and three in security administration offices on campus. IndigoVision uniquely provides Control Center software as license-free, allowing the university to deploy workstations around the campus for no more than the cost of a standard PC. This further reduces the upgrade costs and was another factor in the university choosing IndigoVision.

The original VCRs have been replaced with IndigoVision NVRs. Four Windows-based NVRs are installed in the main security control center and three stand-alone NVRs at remote locations. Recorded video from any of these NVRs can be viewed and analyzed from any Control Center workstation wherever they are located. Over 38 Terabytes of storage in a campus datacenter provides the university with more than 30 days of recordings from all cameras.

The adoption of IndigoVision’s IP Video technology has provided the university with major benefits that were not available from their existing analog/VCR system. These benefits include the viewing of live and recorded video from anywhere on campus, fast analysis and retrieval of recorded footage and complete control over resolution and frame-rates which allows them to match network resources. Expansion is straightforward and future plans include incorporating another 150 cameras from the University of Miami Hospital, a 560 bed facility recently acquired by the University.

“IndigoVision’s CCTV system is a simple, straight forward solution that is easy to use and does exactly what it is designed to do,” said Tony Artrip, executive director of public safety for the campus. “It is great to view any of the cameras on campus or at remote location locations miles away, directly from your desktop. Searching for an incident on recorded video could not be easier.”

A recent incident demonstrates how the university has used the system to good effect. An item was stolen from a remote site located 75 miles north of the medical campus. The relevant footage from the incident was retrieved almost immediately and sent via e-mail to the police having jurisdiction. With the original system it would have taken someone hours to reach the remote site and off-load the video to a usable format for the local authorities.

The university is investigating using the IP video system for distance learning applications which would involve broadcasting lectures to many remote students at the same time. This can be achieved with IP multicasting, a feature of IndigoVision’s IP video technology. It allows live or recorded footage from a single camera to be efficiently viewed by multiple operators simultaneously, no matter where they are located on the network.

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