For some time now, articles have appeared in the CCTV Industry Press about the surveillance world moving into ‘digital’, and the potential opportunities this offers for installers who are willing to grasp the digital/IP phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to take a look at a new, yet parallel set of opportunities that ‘going digital’ can offer end users, both existing and new.
The onset of digital is a phenomenon that offers huge benefits to existing users of CCTV security surveillance systems, by allowing them to move from analog tape-recording systems to the more effective and flexible digital recording systems.
This onset, simultaneously, opens up a totally new, unexploited market that perhaps could best be termed operational surveillance rather than security surveillance.
Security surveillance CCTV, in its most common sense, relates to watching a site, an event, or people for the purpose of ascertaining that security is not breached. In the main, this involves on-site recording with the possible transmission to a remote site of video images of an alarm or a breach.
Operational surveillance CCTV, on the other hand, is a market segment that, arguably, could be as big as the security surveillance sector, but as yet has not really been born in the UK. Certainly, so far, it has not been given much space in the industry press.
Operational surveillance
Rather than being concerned with security breaches, operational surveillance would have as its primary concern the monitoring of performance and activities within a multisite organisation for the purpose of ensuring that these meet with prescribed or expected standards of that organisation.
Consider a simple example of a multiple retailer. Typically, there is a central head office from which a number of area managers operate with the sole purpose of checking that the shops display the goods, service the customers and sell to budgets, all in the manner prescribed.
Consider further, the time an area manager might be able to spend in any one shop in any one week, given that he or she usually has several shops to look after and given the difficulties of travelling from site to site. The chances of successfully overseeing the shop are, in reality, quite slim.
It must not be forgotten that most departures from a prescribed 'norm' within a retail shop would arise not when the area manager is there but, rather, when he or she is on the road.
Consider then an alternative arrangement, whereby live or playback images, from strategically placed CCTV cameras in the shop, can be relayed over a telephone or broadband network to the central office, whenever this is required, continuously. Such images could also be relayed to a small handheld PDA, so allowing the area manager to view such images whilst still on-the-road.
Add to this scenario the opportunity of operating the cameras from the central office, in order to follow a particular event happening in the shop, and suddenly we have a very powerful management tool which, to date, has not been fully recognised.
Suddenly, very effective operational monitoring can now take place from any remote location, allowing area managers to be freed up to tackle serious or important issues, perhaps in consequence of such operational monitoring.
In a multisite organisation, where each site has CCTV cameras and a video server/digital recorder which acts to record as well as to transmit these images to a remote location, either across ADSL/broadband, ISDN or PSTN, the central office can now:
* Monitor the manner in which customers are served - from this immediate corrective measures can be organised, including staff training.
* Monitor shop layouts and even determine from the office what changes are needed to improve the layout in order to improve traffic flow within the shop.
* Monitor the utilisation of staff, particularly in slack periods.
* Observe a given shop continuously in cases of suspected security issues.
* Play back images very easily and offer these to the police as evidence, in cases of staff abuse by customers.
In the scenario of a CCTV system linked to a digital recorder and video server, it is also very easy to add to it a till-scanning facility. Continuous digital recording of till transactions can therefore be achieved, alongside the recording of any event at the till which is outside of the normal, allowed activity.
Thus, if a 'void' was not allowed, then the till-scan system could be programmed to generate an alarm signal to the digital server/recorder whenever a 'void' was processed, such signal taking the form of either a number of frames of video, or a snap-shot, both of which would be recorded for viewing at any convenient point in time, either locally or remotely. Utilising the alarm facility to record abnormal transactions, allows the supervisor to review in playback just those alarm events, saving time in viewing total playback.
Given that recording for continuous periods of many days can be achieved, the exact number of days depending only upon the size of disk within the recorder, then it is clear that reviewing events after they have happened becomes very easy.
Given that such reviewing can be done either on site or from a remote location, then it also follows that a truly flexible and powerful management tool is now available.
The development described above, within a multisite retailing environment, can be equally relevant to many other industries, where multiple-sites often arise, for example:
* Hospitality industry.
* Care industry - both children and elderly.
* Leisure industry.
* Private homes where the owner is frequently away.
* Warehousing depots.
* Transport depots and the like.
* Housing schemes.
* Nightclubs.
* Port authorities.
* As well as every (security) application where multiple site surveillance is required and where central control of a remote location is required.
Any company, where multiple sites exist and where some form of central process or event monitoring is required, is a perfect opportunity for invoking operational surveillance using digital video servers and recorders.
This is on top of the immediate opportunity of converting existing analog CCTV systems to at least digital recorders, and at best to digital video servers and recorders, so offering such customers the new opportunity of accessing their existing CCTV system from anywhere in the world.
For more information contact Matthew Poray, Internet Video Solutions, 0944 121 689 2863.
Internet Video Solutions is an exhibitor at IIPSEC (International IP in Security Exhibition & Conference) which takes place on 27-29 January, 2004 at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry, UK. This innovative technology exhibition will be packed with all the latest cutting edge IP security technology, including networked surveillance products, DVRs, image software, access control, intruder detection, fire detection and intelligent building management solutions, all running over IP. To pre register and get tickets for the show, go to www.iipsec.com.
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