Residents of west Cumbria’s towns and cities have long enjoyed the benefits of CCTV, with a number of disparate systems installed at different times over the years to serve their security needs.
Not surprisingly, when Cumbria Police decided to integrate all of these systems and feed them back to a central Control Room at Penrith, the powers-that-be knew it would be a massive task. In attempting to wrest monitoring control from some of the local authorities, there was also a political can of worms to be dealt with.
“We were first granted Home Office funding for the project back in 1999,” explained PC Malcolm Huddart from the Penrith Police HQ, “and kicked things off by providing 24-hour coverage of car parks and shopping centres. We then decided to extend the scheme county-wide, right down to village level and taking in 130 cameras on seven main systems and ten sub-systems. The CCTV coverage now includes streets, housing estates and residential areas, as well as the aforementioned shopping centres and car parks.”
The project necessarily entailed finding a way of integrating all the different types of equipment, upgrading some of the poorer systems and the power system. This onerous task fell to consulting engineer Oscar Faber (since ‘rebranded’ Faber Maunsell) and system manufacturer and designer Ultrak. Together, they proposed a solution that the police felt to be workable and cost-effective.
Ultrak’s systems applications manager Phil Hutton takes up the story. “It’s a very complex system,” said Hutton, “because we’re forced to pick up existing equipment from a number of different manufacturers, drive it and provide status reports for Penrith HQ. Everything is centralised, but each system stands independently as well.”
Hutton added: “What we’re essentially dealing with is a combination of hardware and software interfaces, and we’re doing so by using our our own bespoke hardware that’s ‘software-malleable’. We can adapt the software in the hardware to make it integrate, as we have done with several legacy systems. We did it this way because the hardware is extremely reliable. If you are only doing it on a software platform, with the computer acting as the ‘front end’ which operators poke at all the time, the danger is that the software will fall over and you’ll lose your integration.”
Hutton then told SMT: “The hardware, on the other hand, is extremely reliable. Once you’ve implemented the software to drive the local system it seldom falls over.”
The scope of the project
The Penrith HQ Control Room plays host to nine monitor positions and two supervisor positions. Each operator has a keyboard and monitor as standard, while the supervisors also enjoy a graphics terminal. Feeding back to these terminals are images from a total of 17 different surveillance systems.
Putting it mildly, the ways in which these systems are arranged is fairly complex. For example, the Whitehaven and Workington CCTV system also covers Cleator Moor, Egremont, Millom, Cockermouth, Wigton, Maryport and Keswick – all of which are inter-linked in one way or another. An explanation of how these are configured offers a clear picture of the complexity of the project.
In practice, cameras located in the small towns of Cleator Moor, Egremont and Millom feed images through to the town centre Control Room at Whitehaven, as do the cameras trained on Whitehaven town centre itself. Therefore, the CCTV operators in the Whitehaven Control Room are able to drive any of these systems and sub-systems.
However, each of the three smaller towns also has a part-time Control Room whereby police officers may walk in and control cameras if there is a situation brewing in the town centre. In truth, all of the sub-systems within the Cumbrian set-up boast this ‘walk-in Control Room’ capability.
As the Whitehaven Control Room is not permanently staffed, images will in turn be fed back to the Workington Control Room – which also receives inputs from Cockermouth, Wigton, Maryport and Keswick. Again, all of these inputs can be fed back to the Penrith HQ. Operators at Workington are able to control any of the Whitehaven sub-systems as well.
As you’d expect, the Workington town centre cameras also come under the control of the Workington Control Room (by way of a remote matrix, mainly because of the manner in which the system was originally wired).
“There’s also a selectable quad at Workington,” explained Phil Hutton, “so the operators can put up two video feeds of Workington and two of Whitehaven and bring that back as one input.”
Interestingly, inputs from some of the Workington cameras are collated on the roof of Woolworths before being microwaved back to the town centre Control Room. This is basically because twisted pair cables were installed there during the war to set off air raid sirens, and the Council decided to run the cameras on this system. “It’s not an entirely successful set-up,” added Hutton, “but it produces a picture”.
Priority of image control
Due to the complexity of the systems and sub-systems involved, priority of control was very important when it came to overall system design. As a result, there’s priority control not just from town centre to town centre, but also between the four operators in Workington (with one designated supervisor, while the others are subordinate keyboards).
Phil Hutton explained: “Monitoring staff each receive all the signals all of the time, but there’s a priority level in each keyboard. Since it’s a networked system, each user has a unique identity. If a supervisor approaches any one of the keyboards and inputs his or her supervisory code, then they would take priority over anyone else trying to view the images.” What would happen, then, if two supervisors want control at the same time?
“If two supervisors grab cameras at the same time there’ll be a ‘bun fight’,” suggested Hutton. “It’ll be first come, first served. The system will also tell you when a camera is already under the control of any given supervisor. As soon as that camera is selected a message will flash up stating that the camera is already under control (and offering the choice of relinquishing control or not). The fact that the system is multi-casting means that everybody can view the cameras at the same time, so the priority control levels are purely for just that purpose – control.”
In all, Penrith HQ receives five inputs – from Workington, Kendal, Barrow-in-Furness, Penrith Hunters Lane (the old Control Room at Penrith Police Station) and Carlisle. Although none of the remaining systems are as complex as the Whitehaven/Workington arrangement, they all have their interesting points.
The systems at Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness, for instance, belong to the local authority – whose mandarins weren’t happy about the police having any sort of priority control. The police, on the other hand, felt that they should have control as it was they who were financing the integration of the system (to the tune of GB pound 180,000, with GB pound 111,000 of funding materialising direct from the Home Office).
Telemetry in a new guise
Extensive negotiations led to an interesting arrangement for the control of the telemetry, with a range of messaging facilities being installed to try and maintain some form of co-ordination. Carlisle Police HQ still has priority over Penrith – the only area in the system, in fact, where this is the case – so the operators in Carlisle can override Penrith HQ at any time.
“If Penrith HQ selected Camera One from Carlisle town centre, for example, then an operator in Carlisle viewing the same event could actually wrest control from Camera One and take it back off the police,” stated Phil Hutton. “That said, there is quite comprehensive text-based messaging that goes backwards and forwards. Messages that will appear on both operators’ monitors. It follows, then, that if the operator based in Carlisle selects the same camera as an operator at the Penrith HQ the display will say ‘Already under control of Penrith HQ’, then it will say ‘Take control?’ If the Carlisle operator presses ‘yes’ on the keyboard, Penrith will receive a message along the lines of ‘Control overridden by Carlisle’.”
Apparently, this overriding of the Penrith HQ happens on a regular basis. Indeed, the situation can – and does – become even more complex because each of the town centre Control Rooms also has a VCR – apparently dubbed ‘cuckoo VCRs’ by the police.
Phil Hutton noted: “These ‘cuckoo’ VCRs are actually controlled by Penrith HQ despite the fact that they’re at the local end. If Penrith HQ decided there was something that warranted recording, they could then drive that video recorder independently.”
According to Hutton, where matters become really complicated is if Penrith is recording something from a Carlisle camera. “If Carlisle selects the same cameras as Penrith is using to record,” stated Hutton, “text will flash up on the screen saying ‘Under record police HQ’, but at that point they can still ‘steal’ control because they have priority.”
Although the Carlisle Control Room is operated by the local authority, it’s actually set inside the police building. There is an intercom linking it with Penrith HQ, offering scope for working more closely together. “If something really silly began to occur then the operators at either end would just pick up the ‘phone and discuss it,” reassured Hutton. Given that the system in its entirety covers five or six local council areas, it’s hardly surprising some difficult situations have arisen. The 12-camera Kendal and Barrow-in-Furness systems, for example, are (technically-speaking) fairly straightforward, feeding back to Penrith HQ with no sub-systems. However, organising the systems presented a raft of new challenges.
In Kendal, the existing system used Philips CSI cameras – but it seems that Philips was unwilling to co-operate when it came to integrating the scheme. “Philips would not release the system interfaces, so we had no choice but to replace the receivers and parts of their cameras,” stressed PC Malcolm Huddart. “In truth, we virtually had to gut that system to make it compatible.”
The Barrow-in-Furness surveillance set-up also takes in Ulverston. This was a complex issue to resolve, as these localities are under the jurisdiction of different Council domains. “Ulverston couldn’t afford its own Control Room, so its equipment was set up in the Barrow Control Room and is manned by Barrow operators,” added Phil Hutton. There’s a separate keyboard that only drives the Ulverston system, thus if the CCTV operators want to drive Ulverston only they have to physically change keyboards. Even though the two keyboards dedicated to the Barrow system can also drive the Ulverston system as well.
“The underlying reason for this,” added Hutton, “is that Barrow invoices Ulverston for its time spent operating Ulverston’s cameras. There’s an event tracker on the system that logs which operator is operating which camera and at what time.”
Making ease of use a priority
At Penrith, every possible effort has been expended in trying to make the system as efficient and easy-to-use as possible. “One of the niceties of the system is that you’re not limited by hardware or software. You can actually do anything you want with it,” enthused Phil Hutton.
“At the Penrith HQ Control Room,” he added, “we’ve tried to make life as easy as possible for the security staff operating the system. We’ve used the overlays on the keyboards to identify the towns and the cameras, rather than the operators having to try and remember which cameras cover which areas. Selection is carried out geographically, so the first level shows the whole of Cumbria. Then, if an operator wants or needs to observe what is happening in Whitehaven he or she would touch Whitehaven, ‘drill down’ into the system and then explore deeper into the sub-systems.”
Unfortunately, there’s quite a high staff churn rate in the Control Room so the graphics have been configured to be bi-directional. In this way, one of the supervisor’s positions can also double-up as a training station for new recruits. Phil Hutton explained: “If you select Camera 233, that might be Camera 12 in Egremont so the graphics show you which camera it is, providing feedback that the right camera has been selected.”
According to Hutton, this makes the system very end user-friendly – and quite intuitive.
Since the bespoke, integrated surveillance system went ‘totally live’ – in October last year – it has proven to be very successful, both from a technical standpoint and from a crime prevention angle. “Crime detection in town centres has increased significantly since the system went live,” noted PC Malcolm Huddart. “The cameras offer a more realistic picture of what’s going on. From that point of view, it’s also been very useful in terms of monitoring public safety and managing major events.”
He added: “I would imagine that this is the first time that images from 17 different towns have been networked back to a central HQ where most of the existing equipment has been retained,” added PC Huddart.
The system: old versus new
As PC Huddart implies, other than the equipment needed to integrate the disparate CCTV systems there has been very little new kit added to the Cumbrian CCTV network.
Extra RS1000 circuits providing 2 Megabit links have been installed by BT in some sections of the system, with transceivers at either end to provide two video circuits over the links. In addition, new fibre optic cable has been used to provide the link between Penrith Hunters Lane and the Penrith HQ.
There are also plans for future additions to the system in line with an upgrading of the police network.
Phil Hutton predicts that similar upgrades of other CCTV systems will take place across the country. “There are now a lot of what I would call ‘second generation’ systems. Systems where the end users have had a first bite of CCTV, discovered what they like and don’t like about it and begun to put more rationale behind how their chosen systems are used.”
