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| Hertfordshire County Council installed Xtralis's ADPRO remote security technology |
The challenge
As with many educational establishments across the United Kingdom, schools in Hertfordshire are experiencing increasing levels of crime. The main issues tend to be vandalism of property and theft of high value items such as computers and other learning equipment.
Robert Holgate, the CCTV Control Room Manager for Stevenage Borough Council explains "Initially we were just looking to reduce incidents of vandalism and petty crime within a particular secondary school in Stevenage, and looked for a CCTV solution for this purpose".
Based on initial trials, ADPRO FastTrace proved to be very successful; "With ADPRO FastTrace we can not only transmit and record what is happening, but we also have a real time audio function that allows us to warn intruders off site, and let them know they are being watched. We very quickly added a further school in nearby Welwyn Garden City to our scheme, which meant we now had a secondary school and a primary school template that we could roll out across the county - not just in North Herts, but also much further afield".
So, what originally started as a relatively small-scale operation involving a single school now looks like becoming a county-wide scheme as Robert explains: "Then we discussed the possibilities of Broadband, and making use of the National Grid for Learning, and whether we could use this Broadband connection to deliver a much wider security monitoring service for all of our schools, of which there are more than 450."  |
| ADPRO FastTrace installed in Hertfordshire County Council proved to be very successful |
The solution
At the heart of the solution is the ADPRO FastTrace Multi-site video security system being used in conjunction with the ADPRO video central gold software, providing an essential combination of video alarm verification, remote site monitoring and control, and long duration evidential quality recording. The technology is installed within the Council's flagship CCTV Control Room.
"All of the sites work on distress alarms," Robert explains, "so that my operators can now use their time most effectively monitoring the Town Centres (pictures from 144 cameras across nine town centres are relayed back to the Stevenage Control Room) but still respond should an incident occur".
Helge Rognstad, Marketing Manager at Xtralis explains: "We have developed ADPRO FastTrace as a Multi-Site Video Security System for evidential quality recording that delivers rapid remote access of live events and instant retrieval of stored images. With intelligent, interactive management software and advanced compression algorithm capability, ADPRO FastTrace provides 120 days storage of archived video at 1 ips on 10 cameras without compromising image quality."
The results
The result is a secure, cost-effective and reliable remote off-site video transmission and verification system. Long-term recording of evidential quality images can either be continuous or programmed to activate on movement or transaction. The system is capable of simultaneous viewing, recording and playback and can accommodate up to four users (local or remote) at one time.
"Essential to enabling us to do this has been our relationship with the manufacturers of ADPRO, Xtralis, and the capabilities of its technology," Robert explains. "From just one computer we can monitor more than 20 sites. They have adapted to what we want at every stage, including now looking at integrating their technology onto our front end so that every element of control is in front of our operators without having to look at different screens.
"The next stage," he concludes, "is working with Xtralis to explore different ways of bringing back IP-addressable cameras, including temporary cameras, so that we can monitor even more Council properties and amenities using a broadband connection."
