With over 90,000 inhabitants, Ballarat is one of Australia’s largest inland cities. That said, it’s also a classic rural community, with historic architecture, iconic double-decker shop fronts and a thriving entertainment area.
It was primarily the need to monitor the entertainment district late at night that prompted the local council to deploy an IndigoVision IP video surveillance system as part of its CitySafe initiative.
The system was installed by IndigoVision’s Authorised Partner, Safe Security Systems, is based on a specification drawn up by consulting engineer Umow Lai and images monitored by Victoria Police in a local Control Room.
Victoria Police’s senior sergeant Tim Argall has to deal with big city problems from a small city police station. Having experienced poor quality surveillance images from existing systems, he had little expectation for the new system.
“The footage we see from private premises is so poor you might as well not bother with a surveillance system because no-one’s recognisable,” bemoaned Argall.
On the day of commissioning, when live pictures from all the cameras were streamed into the Control Room for the first time, that attitude was quickly transformed.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that there was a crowd of people in the Control Room admiring the camera views,” enthused Argall. “It was sensational. Way better than we ever expected it to be.”
He continued: “From an operational perspective, it has given us so many more options in terms of extra evidence we can use.”
Two sides to the story
Argall and his fellow officers are often confronted with a situation where there are two parties giving two sides of a story and witnesses that don’t want to get involved – but now there’s no question about culpability.
“The system lets us take evidence and play it to an individual in an interview and ask for their response. From 50 metres across the road and high up on the side of a building, we’re zooming in and reading labels on shirts. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Argall stated that, ultimately, the system will have a deterrent effect in that people will know it’s there and respect its capabilities.
A key element in choosing IndigoVision’s solution was its ability to work with third part analogue surveillance components (including fixed cameras, monitors, keyboards and PTZ units).
Main monitoring tool
It’s IndigoVision’s Control Center security management software that’s being used as the main monitoring tool. The police officers view recordings with the use of motion, time and camera search criteria to quickly find an incident, and this significantly improves efficiencies.
Live or recorded video from all the cameras can be viewed simultaneously on the dual monitor set-up in the Control Room.
An additional Control Center workstation sits on the Sergeant’s desk and is used to export evidential quality video clips for use with investigations and in Courts of Law.
Video is stored on two IndigoVision standalone NVRs boasting 4 Tb of storage and providing a 30-day archive for the end user.
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