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A crime-free UFS

The University of the Free State offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and diplomas to over 30 000 students at its three campuses. The main campus, which dates back to 1904, is situated in the heart of Bloemfontein and caters for 26 000 of the students.

In the interest of protecting its students, staff and property, this facility recently decided to upgrade its security measures across the campus, including the 23 residences, faculty buildings and parking areas. The modular solution is being rolled out and its success is already evident.

“We were looking for well-established brands of access control and CCTV systems,” says Chris Linstrom, deputy director, University Free State ICT Services. “The access control system we had was more than 15 years old and the support was from a small company. The camera system was not centralised and consisted of various makes of cameras from different companies. Support is of the utmost importance, and the installation team we selected for the upgrade had to be professional.”

Mike Austen and Alastair McPhail from Powell Tronics, a national supplier of advanced access control and security solutions to the trade, visited the site and specified the necessary centralised and seamlessly integrated solution. IDtek was subsequently awarded the contract to supply, install and support the new access control and surveillance systems.

IDtek’s Julian Thorrold explains the solutions that have been installed so far: “For the surveillance solution, the Bosch VMS (video management system) has been deployed to cover the surveillance of public areas for people-related risks, which include the likes of theft and loitering. Such solutions increase the safety of the students and greatly reduce the chance of motor vehicle theft around the campus.

“High-speed pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) cameras have been installed in the residences and areas where there are large volumes of people and movement. In addition, static cameras have been positioned at the doorways of exam locations and other sensitive, high-risk areas.”

On the access control side, the old magnetic stripe card system is being replaced with RFID contactless card technology, which also has MiFare capability for potential future ‘cashless environment’ type use. The campus is currently using standard proximity cards for access to faculty buildings and computer rooms. Multidisciplinary intelligent readers and door controllers have been installed as part of the move towards a network-based solution going forward.

The integration between the Bosch surveillance platform and the Impro Technologies access control solution on the doors means that if an alarm is raised at an access point, video surveillance footage comes up on screen in the control room.

The IP surveillance system runs on the UFS network via VLAN and although it is centralised, specific viewing stations can be set up with predefined account privileges. For example, if a viewing station is set up to monitor the examination room, that station will not have access to footage from any other surveillance camera.

“The solution we are implementing has proven success at Unisa, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town so it has a good pedigree in the academic space,” says Linstrom. Motheo Technikon is currently installing the same solution at four locations as a direct result of the success of the UFS project.

Implementation of the new solution started in September 2010, but its modular, scalable structure ensures that as one section of the campus is completed, the new solution is up and running immediately and the phased rollout continues in other areas.

“In January 2010 there were 50 crime incidents on campus. This was reduced to five in January 2011 after the first phase of the camera system was introduced,” Linstrom concludes.

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