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Hikvision secures Ningbo city buses

Mobile surveillance keeps passengers and other drivers safe.

The Ningbo City Bus mobile surveillance project, one of the largest transportation installations in China, covers more than 3600 buses belonging to 14 transportation companies in Ningbo city.

The Ningbo Transportation Department faced many of the common problems with security on its buses and needed to protect its assets and provide for the safety and security of passengers and drivers. The security system needed to provide evidence in the event of theft or injury, help to settle disputes between passengers and staff.

The surveillance system had to support high quality video playback and store video data going back two weeks. Anti-shock technology would be adopted as well to ensure normal function of the mobile surveillance system when the bus is in motion. Hikvision created a high-quality mobile solution which consisted of the DS-8004HMF-B mobile DVR, the DS-1002HM-S mobile DVR backup device and the DS-2CC512P colour dome camera to meet these requirements.

Coverage in the bus

In this mobile surveillance system, four Hikvision cameras were installed separately in the windscreen, carriage, front door and exit of each bus, providing surveillance coverage of more than 90% of the bus.

The camera installed in the windscreen mainly monitors whether the drivers go through a red light which would easily lead to traffic accidents. The camera fixed above the driver mainly monitors whether passengers enter the bus without tickets. The camera in the middle of the bus monitors the security status (theft or dispute) throughout the bus and the camera at exit keeps an eye on the behaviour of passengers getting off the bus.

This system creates a strong deterrent effect on criminals as well as unruly passengers, effectively ensuring the safety of the drivers, passengers and their property. In addition, if there are complaints about drivers from the passengers, or dispute between passengers, the related video footage can be retrieved and viewed for reference.

Video quality and performance

Using the H.264 video codec, the Hikvision DS-8004HMF-B mobile DVR supports real-time viewing and playback with the resolution of up to 4CIF. Moreover, the DS-2CC512P colour dome camera delivers horizontal resolution of 480 TVL (752x582), and it also features colour and B/W auto switch, ensuring high image quality for 24/7 monitoring.

Hikvision’s mobile DVR also features anti-shock technology for reliable performance. It can effectively avoid the damage to hard disk drives, as well as making the surveillance system function normally when the bus is running. The GPS module embedded in the mobile DVR can help the security staff to locate the bus via an e-map on the client software and take quick action should an emergency happen.

Local storage

“As more than 3600 buses are equipped with surveillance products, it is unrealistic to pay attention to the on-site status of each bus simultaneously,” said Chongguan Jin, vice director of scientific and information department in Ningbo city public transportation head office. “In addition, the real-time video transmission means higher cost. So we chose to store the video data locally for playback and retrieving instead of real-time monitoring in this project at the moment.”

To realise high-capability local storage, the Ningbo transportation department chose the hard disk drives with the capability of up to 750 GB each, which can store video data at least 15 days. The Hikvision DS-1002HMI-S mobile DVR backup device was also used in this project for video data backup. With e-SATA interface, the DS-1002HMI-S can be connected to the mobile DVR for high-speed video data backup in any specified time frame.

Rich interfaces for expansion

Though this project did not use real-time monitoring, the transportation department knows it may decide to upgrade that system at a future time. For this reason the reserved network interfaces in the system will allow for wireless network video transmission to deliver real-time video/audio and alerting signals to the monitoring centres if required. Also, other interfaces are also set up on the mobile DVRs for people counting, GPS positioning and more for easy expansion.

For more information, contact Finn Wu, Hikvision, +86 571 8700 6060, [email protected]

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