CCTV

Video surveillance shrugs off its big brother image

Forget the ‘Big Brother’ image; facilities managers, plant operators and public servants across the world are coming to realise that video surveillance is an effective deterrent and an essential safety technology. Industries and applications as diverse as power utilities, water plant, rail, traffic control, shipping, commercial buildings and facilities, and industrial plant are all turning to video surveillance technologies as a means of assuring the safety of employees and customers in dangerous areas, as well as securing assets against intentional or accidental damage. In addition, in our increasingly litigious society, effective surveillance and recording can provide a means of defence against frivolous claims.

Live monitoring & analysis
Meeting these diverse needs places stringent requirements on surveillance technology, and this has evolved rapidly in recent years, delivering a new paradigm for live monitoring and live analysis. Computer based systems of today are able to use software models to make a judgement on what is normal behaviour and what is anti-social behaviour, or to provide early warnings as potential hazards become evident, or even to monitor patterns of travel/movement and derive improved systems/schedules for handling peak traffic. Indeed, software analytics are one of the fastest growing applications for increasingly capable CCTV-based surveillance systems.

Where this all starts is with a move away from the traditional analogue technologies that have historically characterised surveillance installations, and towards digital camera and network topologies. The traditional picture of video surveillance is built around analogue cameras, feeding their video over coax cables to a multiplexer, which in turn feeds a combination of monitor screens and video recorders. But as David Moss, European sales and marketing manager at GarrettCom Europe, points out, there are severe limitations of this technology.

“There are weaknesses at all levels of the system. There is no flexibility within the installation to meet evolving requirements and with the exception of the very best analogue cameras, the picture quality is generally not good enough to meet today’s requirements for, say, face or number plate recognition. To monitor the video in real-time, you have to be within reach of the coax feed, which in practical terms means that you need to be on-site sat in front of a screen. The limitations of the video recording technology mean that any analysis of the data has to be historical analysis – there is no possibility for real-time software analysis.”

Once a video surveillance system is part of an IP-network, the requirement for on-site monitoring is eliminated, a video feed can be monitored in real-time over the internet, potentially from anywhere in the world.

The attraction of IP-networks as the standard for video surveillance is a function of its massive, established installed base, and the fact that the technology is standardised, low cost and low risk. It is reliable, well understood and well supported. But video traffic is high speed and high bandwidth, and it makes stringent requirements of the IP infrastructure devices that must handle it. The IP switches, for example, that provide connectivity to the cameras and route the data onto the Ethernet network must combine simple connectivity with the ability to handle demanding video traffic.

GarrettCom Europe has responded to the evolving needs of video surveillance for IP-based technologies with new ranges of Ethernet switches which form the critical infrastructure for a modern, high-bandwidth camera network. The latest Ethernet switches provide connectivity for clusters of surveillance cameras and indeed associated security devices – VoIP telephones, Ethernet-enabled sensors, access control devices, etc – and combine this with fibre-optic connectivity to the control network for high-bandwidth transmission of video data.

Managed switches from GarrettCom also offer the benefits of IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) software as standard. This is key, with modern high definition cameras transmitting data at rates as high as 5Mbps. This multicast traffic has to be effectively managed, to prevent unnecessary traffic flooding the various communications interfaces and bogging down the entire network. The IGMP protocol provides a means to manage this traffic.

Flexibility
Compact, reliable, rugged, hardened for use in demanding plant environments and outdoor use, and with MTBFs in excess of 20 years, GarrettCom Europe’s Ethernet switches for video security and surveillance applications meet the all the requirements of the modern surveillance installations.

“They offer flexible combinations of copper and fibre Ethernet ports, with appropriate port counts for typical clusters of IP-enabled security products, allowing networks to be developed highly cost-effectively,” says Moss. “And for ease of installation of surveillance systems, many GarrettCom Europe Ethernet switches now provide Power over Ethernet (PoE) as standard, supplying power to connected devices over the standard data cables, and so eliminating the need for costly cabling back to a central power source.”

For more information
For more information on GarrettCom Europe’s solutions for the security & surveillance, defence and counter terror industries, please visit:
www.garrettcom.co.uk/solutions