How far does one camera feed go – to a dispatcher or monitoring station? What if it could go to every security vehicle in an organization – giving security personnel minute-by-minute updates on what’s happening and where their services are most needed? With wireless mesh, it can, and more.
When voters in the Longview Independent School District (ISD) in east Texas approved a $266.8 million bond issue in 2008, it paved the way for construction of seven new elementary schools, three new middle schools and a complete renovation of Longview High School. Recognizing the critical need for a secure environment for students, staff and school visitors, the bond also provided funding for a new, district-wide video surveillance system.
IP surveillance has long since graduated to a mainstream technology in the security industry – but if you’re still sitting on the fence as to whether or not it’s right for your application, the following list of IP surveillance benefits may help you to decide.
In the decade since 9/11, the United States has invested enormous resources into protecting our critical infrastructure from asymmetrical attacks, such as car bombs and hijacked airplanes. The problem is that our most vital facilities – pipelines, ports, refineries and power plants – are also vulnerable and difficult to secure due to their remote locations.
Not exactly Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence, there was a time when security staff members monitoring blurry CCTV video images on CRTs would look through a kind of cone device to cut down on monitor glare.
Information storage, according to psycho cybernetics author Paul Thomas, has to take place at the unconscious level. Less psycho– and more cyberfocused, Thomas has – unconsciously, no doubt – managed to get security video storage right, too.
Over the coming years the surveillance industry will follow a similar path that the IT industry has tread increasingly more service offerings. These offerings will range from live remote monitoring to managed surveillance systems, with both private and public cloud deployments.
With the overall greater focus on school security accelerated by a number of tragic headlines in the past few years, parents are looking to school districts for assurance that appropriate steps are being taken to keep children safe.
As the surveillance industry adopts network cameras, it leaves behind the legacy NTSC/PAL-based video constraints. These constraints are mostly characterized as resolution limits. This is a great thing for the security industry as a whole, because the increased level of image detail improves the speed and accuracy of investigations.
The fastest growing IP camera technologies are high definition and megapixel. One of these new babies can replace two, three or 95 of the old guys, depending on the marketing hype. But, the bottom line is a bottom line. You’ve got to pay for the new stuff.
RSS
