Video Management: SeeTec Secures Business Center in the Heart of Istanbul

Istanbul, the metropolis at the Bosporus combines modern spirit and traditions like no other city in Europe. An indicator of its fast-paced development is the increasing range of ­services offered in the heart of the city.

Windowist Tower, a complex of buildings in Istanbul‘s trade center Maslak operated by Akdağ Turizm, is one of them. Here you can find everything: Premises, turnkey services and useful contacts. The operating company tries to meet every demand with a special class "All-in-Service".
An important aspect of this service is the building security. Due to the fact that many visitors enter the offices every day, a video surveillance system has been established in order to support the security staff in keeping track of what is happening as well as to prevent theft, detect suspicious parcels and intentional damages by people or cars.

Secure Areas, Rooms, Perimeter
The video solution should be applied to secure the publicity accessible areas in the building as well as the technical rooms and the perimeter.
This includes the entrances and exits, the floor entries inside and utility rooms. At the same time the surveillance should cover events taking place at the restaurant and bar. Here video is used to supervise bar staff, waiters and cashiers. Differing environmental conditions posed the greatest challenges to the planning. The management of Windowist Tower relied on the recommendation of Pronet, a leading Turkish company in security and alarm systems. After testing several products in demo installations and evaluating their performance the management board decided in favor of SeeTec.

The German manufacturer was able to convince by providing a video management software that faced all challenges with-out any difficulty. The end customer's main focus was on an optimized and integrated security concept, on easy handling as well as on scalability to be able to meet growing demands in the future. Additionally the video data should be accessible from several designated places. To keep track of the recordings on the way too, a mobile solution was requested. To monitor and evaluate the image recordings the technical control room and reception area were equipped as control rooms.

As Discreetly as Possible
The SeeTec multi Solution Platform provides the common technical base that allows an unlimited extension of the video system without re-installing software or changing the product.

As the operating company focused on quality, excellent performance and low energy consumption, 157 Axis cameras of different types were selected to meet the differing requirements. Thus, for instance, cameras which are capable of providing high-quality images despite humidity, dust and vibration were installed in the warehouse and outdoor areas. In contrast cameras which provide more details with a resolution of up to three megapixels are used at the lobby and restaurant. In order not to interfere with customers, cameras were placed as discreetly as possible. Recordings and live images can be viewed at both control points, each of them equipped with four monitors, by previously defined groups of users.
Thanks to three SeeTec WebClients and three MobileClients the recordings can also be accessed remotely. The data is stored on two NAS systems for up to 15 days and can be used by the police as evidence in case of suspicious events.

Customer Akdağ Turizm Satisfied
After a short testing period in 2010 Akdağ Turizm was completely satisfied by SeeTec‘s approach. Pronet integrated the system in just one week. ­
First positive results were achieved only a short period after the implementation: Two cases of theft were solved and the stolen goods were returned to their owners. Furthermore, an ingress of water which occured in one of the technical areas was discovered in time and could be stopped before causing any serious damage. By using the archive images the reason was identified and fixed. Ögur Özer, R&D Manager at Akdağ Turizm, is happy about the results:

"Day-to-day we are convinced by the usability of the software. Multi-lingual support and a local branch are the greatest benefits for us. Beyond that, we use the recently established search function and overwrite protection a lot. It facilitates the handling of the image recordings and saves time. We definitely received more than what had been promised to us."

The system is planned to be expanded in future. In order to disburden the security staff on-site, the use of intelligent video analysis features is planned, containing for example the detection of suspicious objects as well as people counting. The number of cameras will increase as well.