Optelecom-NKF Provides IP Surveillance Solution For Paris Tunnels

  • Dec 23, 2009


Optelecom-NKF Inc., a provider of Siqura IP surveillance solutions, recently announced it was awarded a contract with the Direction Interdépartementale des Routes d’Ile-de-France (DIRIF) to implement a video surveillance system for acquiring, transmitting and recording video in 23 tunnels in the Paris area.

Directed and financed by the French Ministry of Equipment, it is the largest traffic monitoring project of its type ever implemented in Europe and the first to fully utilize automatic incident detection (AID) applications. Terms of the multi-year contract were not disclosed.

“We’re pleased to join companies such as SDEL, Satelec, Clemessy, Traficon -- all working to make France’s highways among the safest in the world,” said Dave Patterson, Optelecom-NKF’s CEO and president. “This is a major endeavor. The overall project includes 1800 cameras that will stream MPEG-4 encoded video via Siqura video servers for real-time viewing and recording on Siqura intelligent network video recorders (i-NVRs). The project’s Siqura video servers are H.264 ready, making this installation future proof for upgrades over time.”

This historic project is the result of recommendations made by the French Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Equipment, Transportation, and Housing, following an investigation of the 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel fire, which resulted in the loss of 39 lives and an estimated 392 million euros in tunnel repairs.

Today, every tunnel in France longer than 200 meters is required to be equipped with an AID solution. These solutions are able to detect all major incidents, such as slow moving or stopped vehicles, smoke, wrong-way drivers and fallen objects.

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