Video Surveillance: SeeTec Solution Protects Car Parks in

The French metropolis of Paris is heavily frequented by tourists, commuters from the surrounding area and business travelers from all over the world, 365 days a year. This inevitably leads to an overload of public transport and urban roads, and also puts a heavy strain on the parking situation. For almost 35 years, one of the largest providers of parking places in Paris, SAEMES - the Société Anonyme d'Economie Mixte d'Exploitation du Stationnement - has been relieving the parking situation in the French capital‘s city centre significantly.

More than four million customers use 79 car parks annually; 22 of these are public and 57 are for residents, as well as six park and ride spaces and a parking garage for buses. With an ever increasing number of vehicles, SAEMES is constantly occupied with the optimization of their services. Their focus lies on the avoidance of queues in front of the gates as well as on guaranteeing a high safety standard in the car parks. With the increasing number of parking spaces, the demands on the staff had increased as well and soon reached a limit.

The management board decided to use a video system back in 2009 to assist their employees and to improve the situation. It had to be as intuitive and as easy to operate as possible in order to keep the training time short and ensure subsequent smooth operation by the typically non-specialist staff. Additionally, the administration of the image data should be possible from a central control station.

After numerous installer companies had presented their solutions, SAEMES decided in favor of SeeTec software. A crucial aspect for the decision in favor of the French company was the reputation of the German software house that has accumulated a great wealth of practical experience in the field of video and security. The IP video management software with its clearly arranged user interface that enables intuitive handling was a convincing factor.

Carte Blanche

Since no video solution had been in use before, the company‘s French office was given free reign with regard to system design. Only an entirely IPbased video solution was possible for the implementation of the centralized administration solution. The core of the application consists of the company‘s Multi Solution-Platform, which implements the client's demands down to the smallest detail. The fully scalable solution is able to integrate additional cameras, I/O modules, features or applications by third parties at any time.

To manage all the end customer's locations in a centralized system, only a distributed installation made sense. An administration server was installed in the headquarter's control center and an administrator, who is responsible for the configuration and assigns user rights, views and centrally operates all systems and connects, if necessary, to individual locations. In every car park between 20 and 40 cameras are in use and their images are stored on a server on site and can be viewed by the security staff.

Vis-À-Vis

The team uses a large eyevis screen system at the control center to have a clear view of all locations, and is able to keep a constant eye on events. The display agent functionality enables the 7sqm monitor wall to be controlled by a conventional SeeTec client. That way several alarms can be shown simultaneously on the twelve 46" displays and can be processed from the operator station. The clear and detailed display provides a clear advantage over the usual PC screens: it enables a more precise analysis of the situation and also early intervention in case of incidents.

In addition to the pure video management functionality of the system, SAEMES decided to apply the SeeTec License Plate Recognition at two test locations and to link it with a barrier management system by Eryma. When a vehicle enters the car park, the SeeTec LPR module scans the license plate and compares it with the central license plate data base. If the driver provides additional authorization by using a special ID card, the gate opens automatically.

Vandals Adieu

Romain Lyon, project manager at SAEMES, draws the following conclusion after almost five years of having the company‘s software in service: „We began with an earlier software version and have constantly grown with each version. Of course we keep improving our activities with the company to respond to our customer's needs and are truly satisfied with this partnership". Numerous cases of vandalism have already been solved with the help of the video management system using recorded images that assisted the police in their investigative work. Loitering of criminal gangs of youths all around the parking lots was reduced to the greatest extent possible. For the future, an expansion of the video surveillance system is planned and further locations are to be equipped with the SeeTec software to optimize the situation of parking spaces in the city even further.