The booming local economy of the Glasgow metropolitan area in Scotland has meant that large numbers of companies have been drawn to the region in recent years, many of them to new business parks on the outskirts of the city. These locations require effective surveillance and patrols ensuring that break-ins and thefts are minimized.

Security support suppliers The Corps Monitoring Centre has designed and built a new remote monitoring facility in Glasgow. Commissioned in December 2006 and fully operational since March 2007, the control room staff currently has the ability to monitor systems utilizing a number of the leading security video transmission systems and to have all of these operational at any one time.

At the heart of the control room’s video switching capability is a Zandar multi-viewer. When an alarm is triggered at any of the locations served by the facility, the system automatically selects and displays an image from the nearest security video camera on one of five LCD spot monitors located on operators’ desks. The system has been integrated with an Avocent keyboard video mouse switching system.

“When it came to designing the control room we consulted with the National Security Inspectorate to ensure that the best and most reliable available technology was used, and that the design was as robust as possible,” said Bill MacGregor MCSE, CMC technical manager at The Corps.

“There are up to four operational staff in the room at any one time for 24/7 monitoring. Depending on the job and the time of day, staff can alter or manipulate the display configuration using Zandar’s standard Z-Configurator software, directly from the operator desks.”

Featuring complete integration with access control systems, the Glasgow project is right at the forefront of security systems technology. “The security video images are captured on IP cameras and networked to the control room using broadband-enabled receivers,” said MacGregor. “The aim is to detect any disturbance at any of the sites connected to the control room, in conjunction with manned guarding and police monitoring both the interior and the exterior of buildings.”