Airport Upgrades Surveillance With IP Video Technology

  • Dec 06, 2010

Cardiff Airport has replaced its surveillance capability with a new IP video system from IndigoVision. Operated by TBI Abertis Airports, Cardiff Airport is the national airport of Wales with passenger traffic reaching more than 1.6 million in 2009. It is an important business and charter airport offering flights to domestic and European destinations, as well as connecting flights onwards to worldwide destinations.

Choosing IndigoVision’s technology was an easy decision for the airport having had more than eight years experience of reliable operation from a similar system at London Luton Airport, which is also operated by TBI Abertis Airports. The system at London Luton Airport was first installed in 2002 and became what was then one of the largest IP video installations in the UK.

“All surveillance images are streamed as high-quality digital video in real time at 25 frames per second across the network. By using advanced network protocols and IndigoVision’s multicast capabilities it is possible to view live video at multiple locations with no impact on the network bandwidth. Numerous separate viewing locations are able to view the surveillance images simultaneously,” said Steve Tyler, managing director of Touchstone Electronics Limited, IndigoVision’s approved partner and system integrator for the project.

Workstations running ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Security Management Software, are used to monitor live and recorded video from any of the cameras. It is used by the airport's operations and security teams, and also by Government authorities including South Wales Police and the UK Border Agency, who according to Tyler, “are very impressed with the quality of the video as well as the ‘user friendly’ design of the software.” Potential security threats can be identified much faster with IndigoVision’s advanced analytics and search facilities in ‘Control Center’, such as the thumbnail search feature that allows 24 hours of video to be searched in a matter of seconds.

It is IndigoVision’s unique distributed architecture that allows access from different locations around the airport. Any component, including cameras, recorders and viewing stations, can be located at any point on the network, providing a flexible and scalable security platform. Sophisticated Identity Authorization Management (IAM) features in ‘Control Center’ manage all aspects of user accounts and access permissions and create logs to ensure a secure audit trail is produced.

Touchstone Electronics installed 96 of IndigoVision’s latest series 9000 H.264 fixed, dome and PTZ IP cameras and 26 of IndigoVision’s standalone dedicated NVRs. The NVRs are mirrored creating a fully redundant and fault tolerant recording solution. Video from each camera is continuously recorded onto a primary and backup NVR simultaneously. In the event of a NVR failure, no recordings are lost.

In addition the NVRs have dual redundant power and network connections and are fitted with RAID configured, surveillance rated disks. A total of 104 TB of disk storage allows the airport to archive 4SIF 25 fps video from each camera 24/7 for over 30 days. In the event of an incident, evidential quality video can be exported to assist with investigations and for use in court.

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