The factory, owned by PPG Industries, produces and supplies paints, coatings, optical products, specialty materials, chemicals, glass and fibre glass.
PPG, which operates worldwide, has updated the surveillance system at one of its largest sites in the UK. With Siemens’ Siveillance SiteIQ Wide Area solution.
An automated large-scale video surveillance solution, Siveillance has been designed to combine camera and other sensor input, such as intrusion, fire detection and access control.
It has been designed for industrial facilities, transportation hubs and byways such as seaports and airports, water treatment facilities and other critical infrastructure by continuously monitoring sites through intelligent policy zones and virtual barriers.
Classifying events in real-time
It has been built to detect, track, and classify activity in real time, filtering critical events from camera and other sensor input, displaying the results on a comprehensive digital map of the entire site – on a single screen. This enables operators to see exactly what is happening at any time throughout the whole site. Integrated 3D analytics determine object attributes in absolute ‘real-world’ coordinates.
A spokesman compared the old system to the Siemens solution: “While the system recorded activity 24 hours a day, accurate real-time surveillance was limited to periods when security guards watched video-feed without interruption.
“It was a relatively simple matter to realize that the software intelligence built into the Siveillance SiteIQ Wide Area solution from Siemens Building Technologies Division, would enhance protection of the site, with the additional benefit of simultaneously reducing surveillance costs.”
At the PPG site, the software-driven nerve center of the Siveillance SiteIQ Wide Area solution takes input from many cameras and provides a live, bird’s-eye view of the entire manufacturing facility, spanning over 1000 acres and including a mile of shoreline as well as railway entry and exit
The perimeter and other sensitive areas have been protected by ‘Alert’ zones, an automated triggering of instantaneous alerts that are hoped to ‘substantially’ reduce the cost of monitoring.
If anything unexpected occurs, Siveillance should automatically detect activity, pinpoint the location and tracks the perpetrators whilst simultaneously alerting guards through audio, video notifications, and e-mail alerts, Siemens said.
Alerts are triggered from changes as simple as a vehicle or an individual entering a restricted area, but can also be triggered by object speed or size.
Alert areas are easily and instantly set or changed by dragging area boundaries in the composite image of the site and can be adjusted using preset shortcuts. The open architecture enables Siveillance SiteIQ Wide Area to run on standard hardware and software and allows it to be modified and expanded to respond to changing security needs, according to tthe security company.
“Shortly after the Siemens’ solution was operational, a mock attack was staged with actors portraying terrorists”, a spokesman said. “Operators tracked, monitored, and recorded the progress of the ‘intruders’ by vessel and on foot, via the screen image of the site. Never before had security officials at the site been able to detect and monitor a potential threat to their facility so effectively. They then dispatched guards to their exact locations.”
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