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Underwater surveillance

At 50 km long, with 38 km running underneath the English Channel, the Channel Tunnel is the longest underwater tunnel in the world and is hailed by international civil engineering experts in the US and Europe as ‘the greatest infrastructure success of the 20th Century’.

Eurotunnel owns the concession to operate it until 2086 and to date over 212 million passengers and 196 million tonnes of cargo have passed through the tunnel since the commercial opening in spring 1994.

So it was with a certain degree of pride that Extreme CCTV and Bosch Security Systems learned from Eurotunnel officials that its Extreme Series EX82 cameras had delivered over five years of uninterrupted video surveillance from inside the Channel Tunnel itself.

Extreme CCTV, which specialises in equipment for challenging surveillance environments, was acquired by Bosch Security Systems in March 2008, allowing Bosch to expand its CCTV product portfolio to satisfy an even wider range of applications and customer needs.

By any standards, the Channel Tunnel is an extreme environment due to its low light conditions, high pressure air flows, humidity and ambient salinity, but the EX82 camera took all that in its stride. “Extreme Series cameras have provided Eurotunnel with uninterrupted underground surveillance for over five years now. Due to the location of the cameras, it is important to us that this equipment is low maintenance and is both rugged and reliable,” says Richard Howkins, Eurotunnel’s Maintenance and Signalling Department, team leader.

Extreme’s product marketing manager, Ian Crosby says, “The camera has done a fantastic job to last five years without incident in such a difficult environment. This is a testament to our build quality and design.”

He also points to the product advances made possible by the Bosch acquisition, “the recently released IP version of the EX82 integrates all the advanced environmental and low light performance benefits of the EX82 camera with a Bosch IP encoder, providing full compatibility with all Bosch products.”

Extreme Series cameras are field proven to capture images in the most challenging conditions including; extreme temperature ranges, low-light and no-light environments, corrosive or volatile atmospheres and vandal prone areas. The EX82 cameras are playing a critical role in a system that has safely delivered more than 212 million people and 196 million tonnes of goods through the Eurotunnel since its opening in May 1994, an average of more than 26 000 customers and 50 000 tonnes of goods transported by 300 trains every day.

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