Video over Internet Protocol (IP) is at the centre of a major upgrade to the CCTV capability of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) complex in Swansea.
The DVLA aims to facilitate road safety and general law enforcement by maintaining registers of drivers and collecting road tax for the UK’s 34 million vehicles.
The 100-plus camera system was designed and installed by the Security Services Group (SSG), the UK Government’s own installers. SSG recommended IndigoVision to the DVLA, having worked with the company’s IP video products on other Government projects.
“The new IndigoVision system has transformed the CCTV network coverage of our sites,” said Roy Evans, Technical Advisor at the DVLA. “The ease of use for the operators, expandability and the seamless integration of other security systems, such as IDS, has all benefited our operation.”
IndigoVision says that its distributed architecture means that the DVLA’s CCTV system is flexible and scalable. The site’s multiple-buildings cover an area of 23 acres and house over 4000 staff. The system can even be operated from a remote location if the main control room is out of action. IndigoVision’s equipment was used in the DVLA’s new sustainable print plant as well as to replace ageing analogue-DVR CCTV in existing buildings.
“Upgrade of old CCTV equipment was driven by the need for life-cycle replacement of existing legacy systems,” said Evans. “Distributed IP Video delivers improved integration with a raft of site-wide systems and a secure platform for future expansion.”
As with any major Government site CCTV is required for staff safety, crime prevention, counter terrorism, access control, traffic management and incident response. Operators using ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s security management software, can view live and recorded video from any of the cameras. A number of standalone Network Video Recorders (NVRs) provide 31 days of continuous recording from all cameras. The distributed nature of IndigoVision’s system means ‘Control Center’ workstations, NVRs and cameras can be located anywhere on the site – all that is required is a network connection.
“The fast retrieval of recorded footage using ‘Control Center’ is a major improvement over the original CCTV systems, aiding the security team in more efficient incident management,” added Evans. “The software also produces an audit log that enables managers to quickly identify who carried out the tasks on the system. This was an important requirement for the new monitoring solution.”
All of the existing analog cameras are connected to IndigoVision 8000 transmitter/receiver modules. The 8000 converts the analog feed into DVD-quality digital video for transmission across the network, using advanced MPEG-4 compression. The network and ‘Control Center’ software acts as a virtual matrix, where any camera feed can be routed to any workstation or NVR, no matter where they are located on the network. This replaces the traditional centralized hardware switching matrix of analog/DVR CCTV systems and eliminates the associated single point of failure.
