The new 55,000m2 courthouse in Ghent is operated by the Belgian Ministry of Justice and consists of a fully-secure environment that houses holding cells, court rooms, hearing rooms and offices, with public areas running throughout. The security facilities are used by the police, Ministry of Justice security staff and personnel manning the reception desk. The system was designed and installed by IndigoVision's local partner and integrator Fabricom-GTI.
The IndigoVision software development kit enabled a tight integration of IndigoVision's hardware and ‘Control Center' IP Video and Alarm management software in ICAROS, Fabricom-GTI's security and building management system. Alongside access control, intruder and fire detection and other building related systems, an ICAROS workstation gives the operator seamless access to all the unique IndigoVision features for alarm and video management. This tight integration offers the end-user significant benefits. Whenever an alarm is generated the nearest camera feed is automatically displayed on a monitor and recorded. An alarm can be generated from CCTV camera motion detection, access control points, video-intercom units or from the intruder and fire detection systems. Operators can also manually select camera views for display and recording. Eight IndigoVision Windows-based Network Video Recorder (NVR) workstations are used to record the camera and intercom video at 4SIF, 25fps, as well as the two-way audio from the intercom units.
The combination of the video management software and the IP-network creates a ‘virtual network', which provides unlimited camera switching combinations, overcoming the severe limitations of the traditional analogue CCTV matrix. This allows complete flexibility and scalability for the future. Traditional video-intercom systems typically use a central switching matrix that requires separate cabling from each intercom unit. By fully integrating the video, audio and I/O from each intercom unit into the IP Video system, this switching hardware is eliminated and the benefits of the ‘virtual matrix' can also be applied to the video-intercom.