The city of Arequipa in Peru has deployed a new city-wide wireless surveillance system using IP video. The system was designed and installed by wireless network specialist Netkrom Technologies and IndigoVision’s authorised partner Exprescom.
Arequipa is the capital city of the Arequipa Region in southern Peru and with a population of nearly a million, is the second most populous city in the country. Antonio Bustamante, Security Manager of Arequipa Municipality said: “The new surveillance system is an excellent tool to identify criminal activity and to monitor rush-hour traffic. The superb video quality allows us to monitor incidents in great detail and gather evidence for investigations.”
The Municipality’s security team monitors and controls the system using ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Security Management Software. This allows the city’s security team to view live and recorded video from any camera and to investigate incidents using a suite of advanced post-event analysis tools. Video from all cameras is continuously recorded for 30 days using IndigoVision’s Network Video Recorder (NVR) software and 4TB of disk storage.
“The video management software is very powerful, yet very easy for the operators to use,” added Bustamante. “Features such as scheduled Video Guard Tours allow the team to efficiently monitor all of the cameras and the thumbnail display allows us to analyse 24 hours of video in a matter of seconds.”
City monitoring
Evidential-quality video can be transmitted across standard IP networks over large distances with minimal bandwidth requirement using H.264 compression. This ensures latency is kept to a minimum, which allows PTZ cameras to be controlled smoothly from a distance, and wireless networks to be deployed easily to overcome the cabling problems associated with wide-area surveillance.
Twenty of IndigoVision’s Series 9000 H.264 PTZ IP domes have been installed at key points around the city. This will be increased to 50 cameras as part of an expansion project during 2010. The 9000 IP dome overcomes the high data rates or loss of video quality associated with traditional IP domes when a camera is moving. IndigoVision’s innovative camera design reduces high-bandwidth bursts during pan and tilt movement, through the use of a unique algorithm that automatically adapts the compression to suit the type of movement. The result is improved video compression without losing picture quality during high-motion periods. The camera can deliver video at full framerate with a guarantee that no frames will be dropped even in high-motion scenes, the product firm says.
