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Comprehensive security for retail outlet

This European outlet required a comprehensive CCTV management solution that would protect its visitors, premises and ultimately help to reduce shrinkage from the retail units.

Located in Northern Ireland, The OUTLET is the area’s newest designer outlet shopping centre. With over 60 shops including numerous designer fashion brands and national retailers as well as a wide range of restaurants and cafes, it attracts shoppers from all over Ireland.

As a newly-built shopping centre, a state-of-the-art digital CCTV solution was required to provide video surveillance to all the areas outside of the shops themselves. This included the main 0,5 km long public walkway, the 1500-space car park and the service yard areas behind the shops. Such a requirement would help attract some of the biggest names in retail to occupy the retail units.

It was imperative that CCTV images of evidential quality could be captured and recorded to ensure a high conviction rate when needed. The recording solution needed to be easy to use with realtime recording so that an immediate response to any incidents could be implemented.

Finally, it was important that the design of the CCTV domes complemented the shopping centre’s contemporary design providing effective and aesthetic monitoring. To find the security solution that would suit its needs, The OUTLET undertook a tender process to select a preferred supplier.

Full colour CCTV surveillance is provided during the day, with an automatic changeover to mono at night when light levels are lower ensuring that the quality of the image is maintained. To achieve this a system of 34 high-powered cameras covering the walkways, car park and service yard areas was installed using wall- and pole-mount microspheres from the Honeywell Orbiter range. The easy to set-up presets assist in the establishment of a number of programmable camera tours encompassing pan, tilt and zoom sweeps of key areas of the shopping centre. Perfect picture quality is achieved by advanced auto focus control to ensure that, no matter what the zoom position the picture is in the sharpest-possible focus.

Covering service vehicle delivery areas and the car park, Orbiter microspheres have been deployed to maintain a watchful eye in these areas too. The high power zoom capability of the domes positioned on poles ensure that the vicinity around the centre can also be seen clearly to help prevent security breaches from occurring before any suspected criminals reach the shops.

If there is an incident, the images can be checked within seconds to get information and evidence to pass on to the police. These microspheres are connected via a Videoblox 64/8 matrix with images recorded and stored on four HRHD 320 GB digital video recorders (DVR). The DVR has a built in multiplexer that can record up to 16 cameras at the same time. The HRHD DVR is easy to operate and offers realtime recording.

This Honeywell DVR was recommended because of its high quality performance, multifunctionality and because it makes it easy to retrieve CCTV images via the in-built CD writer.

Additionally, a new, sophisticated security control room operating 24/7 was established. Here all the captured images are recorded and viewed live via five 19 inch Honeywell TFT colour LCD monitors. Cameras and scenes are easily controlled by the ergonomic Videoblox programmable keyboard controller.

This control room also houses the site’s dedicated security team. Thanks to the high power zoom on the cameras that provides crystal-clear detail, the security team can easily communicate with security personnel located outside of the control room to alert them to react to and prevent security breaches.

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