IP Video systems manufacturer IndigoVision is providing the technology behind a new Homeland Security system for New London in Connecticut. New London is a thriving coastal city with a number of important and sensitive military, nuclear power generation and industrial sites. Local security is therefore of prime importance to the Police Department, who are working in partnership with the Coast Guard and other agencies to ensure the community remains secure and to enable timely emergency response.
The CCTV system, designed and installed by IndigoVision's local partner New England Communications Systems, covers an area of 10 km2 and uses a wireless IP network based on Motorola's Canopy system. ‘Control Center', IndigoVision's enterprise video and alarm management software, allows CCTV operators to view live and recorded video from any of the remote cameras.
The flexibility of the IP Video technology means that any component in the system can be located at any point on the network - this provides a scalable and redundant solution. The New London system has exploited this flexibility by locating ‘Control Center' workstations around the town and waterfront, creating three independent control rooms all with the ability to view live or recorded video from any camera.
Recording is achieved using IndigoVision's Network Video Recorders (NVRs) which are again distributed around the network to minimize bandwidth use and provide a fault tolerant recording solution with automatic backup in the event of an NVR failure.
Commenting on the flexibility of the IP Video system, Captain Edwards of New London Police said: "Last July we hosted the East Coast's largest fireworks display with over 200,000 people attending. We set up a temporary command center at the Fire HQ using the ‘Control Center' software on a laptop, with the video feeds projected onto a large screen. This simple set up worked very well and helped us to monitor the event locally."
Each camera is connected to an IndigoVision 8000 transmitter/receiver module. The 8000 converts the camera signal to high-quality digital video for transmission over the wireless network. IndigoVision's advanced compression technology ensures minimum bandwidth usage and helps maximize the available NVR storage.
There are currently plans to extend the system further to cover more of the waterfront and to share the video feeds with other agencies. As the system is based on a wireless IP network adding additional remote cameras and ‘Control Center' workstations is simple and cost-effective due to the scalability of the overall solution implemented at New London.
