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Camera displays in control rooms

CCTV control rooms are often characterised by displays showing large numbers of camera views, or alternatively large numbers of displays. The introduction and affordability of large 40 to 50-inch displays seems to have accelerated this process. I visit a large number of control rooms and discuss the systems that are installed, camera displays, and why people are looking at various views.

One of my conclusions is that the more camera views are displayed, the less they are looked at. This obviously does fit into a time issue – the more cameras there are, the more time you need. But things go way beyond this – in a number of CCTV control rooms, many camera views are never even looked at. In some cases, they are only seen when doing routine camera checks, which should occur as a standard part of a shift, and even this sometimes doesn’t get done. Which begs the question – are your cameras really worth having?

There are a number of reasons that camera views are not looked at. There are far too many camera views displayed and only 'popular' ones are looked at. The camera view is not particularly good and the operator then ignores it from then on. The camera views are crammed onto a large monitor/s and as you can’t see things very effectively, people don’t look at them – they become part of the background wallpaper of the control room. Sometimes it is physically uncomfortable to view, with a bad line of sight, poor image quality, or a monitor may be badly sited so the specified viewing angles of the monitor are exceeded. In other cases, activity is so limited that people start disregarding even paying attention to a particular camera view – in this case if something does happen, it would be nice to have evidence of it, but it is highly unlikely that it will be seen live. All this adds up to real estate in the control room being taken up by camera displays that are never looked at.

I strongly recommend that all managers of CCTV operations do an ongoing audit of what is displayed, what is likely to be seen, and whether operators have incorporated this into their considerations. One needs a viewing strategy by operators depending on risk profile, time of day, events that may occur, and priorities of delivering an effective service. However, you need to be critical of whether a view in the control room needs to be there. On an ongoing basis, the following questions need to be asked:

* What cameras need to be actively monitored – direct surveillance on a regular basis?

* What cameras need to be monitored for any activity?

* What cameras need only to be activated by analytics or motion detection?

* What camera views can be retrieved from recordings only if necessary?

Note that I emphasise the word 'ongoing'. Crime and incident patterns change, in some cases as a direct response to CCTV interventions, and this may require a shift in camera viewing strategy. The manager therefore has to always think tactically. Bear in mind though, that in the case of control rooms and the number of camera views displayed, less is often going to lead to more detection.

Dr Craig Donald is a human factors specialist in security and CCTV. He is a director of Leaderware which provides instruments for the selection of CCTV operators, X-ray screeners and other security personnel in major operations around the world. He also runs CCTV Surveillance Skills and Body Language, and Advanced Surveillance Body Language courses for CCTV operators, supervisors and managers internationally, and consults on CCTV management. He can be contacted on +27 (0)11 787 7811 or [email protected]

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