The Gotschna Tunnel, opened in Switzerland at the end of 2005 with a length of 4.2 km, and is part of the Klosters by-pass and the federal highway A28 extension between Landquart and Davos. The tunnel reduces travel time to tourist destinations and the traffic burden of local communities. Safety technology is state-of-the-art; fire alarm systems, emergency lights, a hydrant pipeline, measuring equipment for CO2 concentration, visibility regulation, traffic control, video monitoring facilities, SOS telephones, fire extinguishers, and tunnel radio technology for police and maintenance services.
Video monitoring as a challenge
Video monitoring of the Gotschna Tunnel is part of traffic safety for the Cantonal Police of Grisons; imag
Analogue-digital-analogue
Video-over-IP offered a viable solution for data transmission, with the most important criteria being image quality and cost/performance ratio, followed by the possibility to eventually replace analogue equipment with digital. The resulting solution was a virtual video matrix, which could digitalise analogue camera signals using an encoder, transfer them via the Ethernet network and subsequently convert digital signals to analogue using a decoder.
Best in test: the SISTORE CX video codec
"The Civil Engineering Office of Grisons subjected four systems to tests under simulated conditions. The intelligent digital video codec SISTORE CX was the clear winner," explains Sandro Mura, responsible for information technology at the Grisons Civil Engineering Office. He continues, "The decisive factors were the excellent image quality and a convincing cost/performance ratio."
SISTORE CX is an encoder and decoder, providing video motion detector, streaming and recording on a digital platform. Its flexible scalability and versatile implementation provide advantageous options. Web-based access across the entire network is simple via LAN/WAN. Image data is compressed using MPEG4, enabling real-time recording and optimum transmission in DVD quality.
In each of the two sub-stations in Selfranga and Drostobel, three SISTORE CX units extract image data to be encoded from a single matrix. At the Cantonal Police Headquarters in Chur, the same number of SISTORE CX units scan the data from the WAN, decode and transfer it to the ATM network (and therefore to the control room) using a codec.