Customer profile
The City of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, is home to approximately 152,000 residents. With the revitalisation of City Hall, several municipal buildings and recreation centres and over 1200 acres of passive and active parkland, the City of Oshawa has a duty to ensure it provides its employees and residents with a safe and secure living and working environment.
Technology & integration
- Aimetis Symphony™ Client & Server software
- COTS hardware for clients & servers
- Axis 241Q video servers
- Analogue, IP, megapixel cameras
Results
- Increased security at public facilities
- Simple phased transition from analogue to intelligent network video
- Minimal acquisition and maintenance costs
- More efficient staffing
- Ability to search through days of recorded video in seconds
Summary
As part of a city-wide effort to increase security at its public facilities, the City of Oshawa selects Aimetis Symphony™ intelligent video surveillance software as its complete monitoring solution.
Business challenge
Aimetis Symphony is a combined video management and video analytics software platform |
The City of Oshawa required an IP surveillance solution to replace the existing DVR system. The solution needed to allow them to centrally monitor more than 130 cameras located throughout the city from City Hall and provide unlimited scalability and flexibility to meet future surveillance needs. Of primary importance was that the solutions provide the city with the tools to be alerted to, and to respond to potential situations in real-time as well as be used in post-event police investigations. Particularly, the city wanted to be alerted to vandalism of city property, car break-ins and irate or violent residents, particularly those who may be threatening city staff.
Solution
After evaluating several surveillance software vendors, the City of Oshawa selected Aimetis Symphony™ as its future-proof solution. As a combined video management and video analytics software platform, Aimetis Symphony™ not only allows the city to manage their existing analogue cameras over the network and replace them with IP cameras when needed, but also allows the city to deploy video analytics on selected cameras, giving monitoring personnel a wealth of intelligent information they can use to increase security for its staff and residents.
One example of the use of cameras with video analytics functionality is in city parking lots. The analytics are configured to detect whether a person standing next to a car is its true owner, or a potential thief or vandal. The determination is made based on the average time it takes a person to open a car door. If a 45 second threshold is broken, the system sends an alert and then the matter is investigated.
Aimetis Symphony™ also makes it much safer for the security guards to do their job. The previous system would require guards to patrol areas or respond to alarms at night without having the ability to view the area ahead of time and determine if they would be putting themselves in a dangerous situation, or should call the police to meet them at the scene. Also, knowing that they are on camera in public areas makes residents think twice about arguing with city employees or acting inappropriately at customer service desks or after receiving a parking ticket.
The city has also found the depth of reporting that Aimetis Symphony™ provides to be an invaluable tool. With a couple of clicks, they can get a report on the areas that are receiving the most alarms and use the information for staffing purposes.