London College Embraces IP Video Surveillance

City of Westminster College has invested in the latest IP Video technology from IndigoVision to provide integrated CCTV surveillance for its new flagship campus. Opened in January 2011, the £102m project involved the re-development of the College's former Paddington Green site in Central London into a new state-of-the-art Campus. Facilities include specialist science labs, a large sports hall and a wide range of construction skills and engineering workshops, as well as community access to facilities such as the Sarah Siddons Theatre and Garden Café. The solution was designed and installed by GES Security Services.

Rapid Incident Response
Using IP-networked digital CCTV has transformed the College's use of surveillance, as Robin Pellett, the College's Estates Manager explains, "The quality and clarity of the images is far superior to anything that we had experienced in the past. The versatility and ease of use of the video management software, together with the integration of the intruder detection system, creates an efficient and effective operator environment that ensures rapid incident response."

The main security control room uses a four-monitor workstation running ‘Control Center', IndigoVision's Video Management Software. Alarms from a Galaxy intruder system are directly integrated with the IndigoVision solution, allowing security breaches to automatically trigger any number of events within the IP Video system. For example, a camera can be panned to a preset position to view the zone in alarm and the location of the alarm highlighted on an interactive building map within Control Center.

"IndigoVision's low-bandwidth scalable architecture has made the installation and deployment of the system very simple," added Robin. "We have been able to use the existing College IT infrastructure and minimise the amount of cabling. The flexibility of the new CCTV system means it's easy for us to move or add cameras as the building use changes and grows."

A total of 85 IndigoVision fixed and PTZ IP cameras are installed inside and outside the building. Many incorporate Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) technology, allowing them to be powered directly from the network, further reducing installation costs. All that is needed to connect additional cameras in the future is a local CAT-5 network point.

Aesthetics Meets High Tech
"The design of the building is superb, with the use of glass and open spaces to create a wonderful learning environment. However, this presented GES with the challenge of designing effective security without disturbing the building aesthetics," said Stephen Hastings, Sales Manager for GES. "By working closely with the College and deploying IndigoVision's fully-digital distributed IP Video technology, we have achieved an integrated security solution that has exceeded the college's high expectations."

All cameras are recorded 24/7 on five IndigoVision Network Video Recorders (NVRs) for 30+ days. The amount of storage required is significantly reduced compared to other IP Video systems because of IndigoVision's advanced compression technology and the use of the unique Activity Controlled Framerate (ACF) feature, which is built into the IP cameras. ACF controls the framerate of the video stream based on the amount of motion in the scene. When there is no activity, video is streamed at minimal framerate; the instant any motion is detected, video is simultaneously transmitted at maximum configured framerate. This significantly reduces the bandwidth and NVR storage requirement for cameras monitoring generally static scenes or during quiet periods such as at night.