Welcome to functionality in the security control room. Furniture installed inside a completely new control room at Royal Sussex County Hospital replaces an older control room. The new facility encompasses a state-of-the-art video wall, equipment storage and control room consoles.

Royal Sussex County Hospital, based in Brighton, is a major teaching hospital and is the accident and emergency center for the south coast of England. The main security threats are drug related problems and aggressive behavior against staff.

“In the initial brief, Gresham Wood Technical Furniture & Design created 3D artist impressions of what the control room would look like. These visuals fitted in with the allocated room and helped with the client presentation. It was exactly what they were looking for. We needed furniture that was durable and made to last since it will be used 24/7,” said Alan Roberts of Meridian Surveillance Systems, which coordinated the installation.

The control room operators now have a proactive working environment. The consoles were designed to give them maximum space, creating a more efficient control room. This is further enhanced with the installation of ergonomic monitor arms for the console monitoring positions. The result is a user-friendly control room for the demands of the security video monitoring operators.

Redeploying Video in a UK City

IP Video technology provides a unique re-deployable security video system for Swindon town center, UK. The system is operated by the Swindon Town Centre Management Team, which assists the police and other partners in reducing anti-social behavior, shore theft and other criminal activity.

Like many towns, this legacy security video system did not provide surveillance of the more remote areas where criminal activity often shifted in order to avoid the cameras – a problem that the Swindon Team was eager to solve.

Under the Swindon Crime Reduction Initiative Partnership (SCRIP), ATEC Security, provider IndigoVision’s local partner, worked closely with the Swindon Team to assess the most effective way to carry out remote surveillance of key locations without incurring the costs or limitations associated with traditional fixed analog town center systems. The solution: a re-deployable camera system using mixing software and wireless IP video technology.

Bernie Maguire of SCRIP said, “They took the time to understand our needs and designed a system that was not only 50 percent cheaper to acquire, but one that will save us 50 percent per year in ongoing revenue costs compared with a traditional CCTV solution.”

Video from the strategically deployed cameras is transmitted wirelessly via line-of-site and a number of relay base stations, back to the control room. This allows the cameras to be re-deployed between base stations without re-configuration. The vandal-proof camera housings were developed especially for this project. Advanced compression technology ensures that the control room staff can view images that are indistinguishable from analog while minimizing bandwidth on the wireless network.

The unique approach adopted by ATEC was recognized at the IFSEC 2006 Awards where it was one of the finalists in the “Most Innovative Security Project” category.