Cameras Reduce Illegal Dumping in Pennsylvania

Alburtis is a borough in Lehigh County and a suburb of Allentown in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. Residents of Alburtis can dispose of lawn clippings, tree limbs and shrubs at the local yard waste center. However, Lehigh County needed to prevent disposal at the center of prohibited items such as construction debris, propane tanks and household garbage. The borough has a lot at stake in its efforts to prevent illegal dumping, from possible damage to the environment to harmful fumes, toxicity and deadly fire risk.

More specifically, the Alburtis Police Department wanted the ability to clearly identify anyone dumping prohibited items, and to see what type of materials they were dumping via remote video monitors at the police station and borough building. Alburtis was able to accomplish its surveillance objectives with a video surveillance system that uses only three cameras - two Megadome AV1355DN 1.3 megapixel H.264 day/night dome cameras for license plate viewing, and one 180 degree panoramic AV8185 8 megapixel H.264 camera from Arecont Vision - for a comprehensive view of the waste center yard. The single panoramic camera installed provides as much coverage as up to 24 standard resolution cameras.

The borough turned to Michael Miller, President of The Wire Guys located in Alburtis to design and install the cameras, server, system setup, and provide training. Miller recommended these cameras because of their competitive pricing, H.264 compression to minimize bandwidth and storage needs, and because of the availability of a 180 degree panoramic megapixel solution.

The newly installed system at Alburtis' yard waste center is integrated with an existing video surveillance system at the borough building/police station via a cable modem that streams live video back to the police station for remote live viewing and web viewing from police cars over a cellular network. The system employs network video recorder software from Exacq Technologies and a Wire Guys custom-built network video recorder with 750 GB of storage. The collaboration between the companies ensured interoperability of the megapixel cameras with the NVR platform.

Highly Compressed
The day/night dome cameras with auto exposure and gain control provide 1,280 x 1,024-pixel images at 32 frames per second. This all-in-one integrated camera and lens in an IP66-rated vandal resistant polycarbonate dome housing features a 1/2" CMOS sensor and technology that processes video at over 80 billion operations per second. It pans the full 360° and has a 90° tilt adjustment. The camera uses H.264 (MPEG 4, Part 10) compression to minimize bandwidth and storage requirements while maintaining real-time image frame rate. Additional capabilities include motion detection, picture-in-picture, image cropping and region-of-interest streaming as well as RTSP capability which makes them compatible with Apple Quicktime, Windows Media Player or VLC player, for example. Light sensitivity of 0.1 Lux at F1.4 enables low-light viewing and recording, and the day/night version used by the borough of Alburtis has a motorized infrared cut filter.

The 180 degree panoramic camera is an 8-megapixel network camera built into an IP66 dome housing with four 2-megapixel sensors that provides up to 6,400 x 1,200 pixel images at 5.5 frames per second. The camera can be set for lower resolutions at higher frame speeds, such as 1,600 x 1,200 pixel images at 22 fps or 800 x 600 pixel images at 88 fps, and combines both H.264 and JPEG compression. Light sensitivity is 0.2 Lux at F2.0, and the AV8185 provides image cropping with up to four regions of interest. The camera can optionally be fitted with a heater/blower should the environmental conditions demand it and a range of different brackets are available to mount the camera. These cameras provide the borough of Alburtis with an ideal combination of HD image quality, variable frame rates, low bandwidth, and lower storage requirements.

Plates and Faces
During the proposal phase of the project, users at the borough were soon impressed and convinced that the exceptional image quality and coverage capabilities provided the resolution they needed for both real-time and playback modes to enforce local ordinances. Alburtis system operators can zoom in for up-close views, even on stored images, view specific parts of a larger image - a person‘s face or a license plate number, for example - without any loss of detail.

The cameras have proven to the borough that megapixel imaging is suitable for almost any application and represents a significant upgrade in system functionality compared to standard-resolution cameras. In addition to lower bandwidth and storage requirements, megapixel cameras dramatically decrease costs related to other elements of a system, such as fewer software licenses, less cabling, fewer lenses, and a decrease in the man-hours needed to implement the system.

The system has already proven successful to date allowing the police to identify and issue citations to people who discard anything but acceptable yard waste. "People were using the location to discard everything from old decks and propane tanks to household trash," said Alburtis Police Chief Robert Palmer. "We wanted a system that could be used to identify people‘s faces, to read their license plates and to see what they are disposing of. We were able to meet those requirements using only three cameras as part of a simple system at a very reasonable cost." Miller added: "The customer is very happy with the system and has had no issues."