Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) Council has upgraded its CCTV. The public space network cameras are for monitoring of public spaces, as well as creating new revenue streams, the council says. First tested during the Bath Half Marathon in March 2016, the race organisers used the new cameras to monitor participant and spectator safety from a single device that can connect anywhere on the network, rather than just from the control room.
B&NES) Council has upgraded using Avaya Fabric Connect networking products. The council can now more easily deploy and manage cameras as needed. Previously, about 90 analogue cameras were connected to a single central control room with only 12 display screens. To view images from different cameras, cables had to be manually plugged and unplugged from each screen, a cumbersome process. While integration of this analogue system with the digital IP camera network used by the council’s transport team would have helped improve the system, lack of funds prevented that project from proceeding.
B&NES turned to its Avaya Fabric Connect network – installed in 2012 as one of the first of its kind in the UK. It not only had the built-in capacity and reliability needed to run the public safety and traffic camera networks 24×7 at no extra cost, but also enabled integration of the analogue public safety and the digital, IP traffic camera networks. The extra network capacity in the Fabric Connect network has improved picture quality on the IP-connected cameras.
For the Bath Half Marathon, with minimal preparation from the BN&S network team, the race organisers used the cameras to monitor the route. With the CCTV cameras successfully integrated into the Fabric Connect network, B&NES is now looking into incorporating more software and devices to extend the network further, getting more from its initial investment.
Martin Snellgrove, Consulting Director, Avaya Professional Services, Europe said: “Avaya Fabric Connect has expanded the network capability of B&NES enormously and the CCTV upgrade is just one part of this. The Council was one of the first organisations to implement Fabric Connect in the UK and it has provided much more flexibility across so many services. We are tremendously pleased this partnership has worked so well for them.”
And Wayne Goodliffe, Chief Technologist for Networks, at the council said: “Since rolling it out, Avaya Fabric Connect technology, has become the lifeblood of our entire network. It enables us to meet so many requirements, both technical and regulatory. Now, different teams within the council come to us with really complex projects, and we can just say ‘yes.’ It really is the perfect solution for what we need and the seamless CCTV migration is proof of that.”
