The recently revamped shopping centre at Menlyn Park, Pretoria now boasts a state-of-the-art CCTV surveillance system provided by Westec Electronics in association with MFS Projects.
The 240 000 m2 mall utilises 66 static high-resolution cameras and 12 high-speed pan/tilt dome units. Areas such as the rooftop drive-in and outdoor entertainment stage are monitored at the central control room as an indispensable aid to crowd control and the personal security of the centre's patrons.
Westec's Project Manager, Dawie Jacobs comments: "Much of the 35 km of video cable used had to be routed through shops that continued trading during the facelift. This made the execution and planning of the installation a high priority in order not to disrupt the shop owners' activities. The farthest camera was some 1400 m from the control room which necessitated the use of fibre-optic cable for the long runs to ensure good picture quality."
The head-end equipment comprises two parts. One provides constant digital recording of all cameras on activity detection at nearly 4 frames/s. The storage enables recordings of 30 days or more to be retrieved from the system. Although being an integral part of the system the operator has no influence on the recordings and therefore cannot be subject to corruption. The recording system utilises six Diginet 2000 digital video recorders.
The other component of the central system allows the operator to view, in realtime, any of the cameras in the centre. Utilising Videoweb as a base the operator has two distinct scenarios for selecting camera views through the graphics display. There are several floor plans depicting the mall and its shops including macro plans of more critical areas. The first method of selection is where the camera locations are highlighted on the graphics display and the operator selects them with ease by clicking the mouse on the desired point. When following a suspect the added benefit is that each of the cameras selected will be displayed on the next available monitor thereby providing a 'walk through' scene of the mall.
The second scenario is not reliant on the operator knowing the location of the cameras but simply clicking the mouse anywhere on the floor plan. The pre-programmed camera for that specific location will be routed to the monitor; including any PTZ pre-position on the dome cameras. The PTZ pre-positioning is focused on areas considered to be high risk: shop entrances and escape routes.
The Operations Director at Westec Electronics, Paul Williams explains: "With the availability of Autocad drawings from the architect we remove unnecessary detail and add what we want to make the system simple to use and more effective particularly when the operator is under pressure". The system can be expanded to interface with shop alarms and panic buttons that will automatically display the relevant video picture to the operator.
For details contact Westec Electronics on tel: (011) 943 2126.
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