This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
CCTV


nership: the businesses have come together and they set up a company to run security for that particular industrial estate, or a number of in- dustrial estates. Tey are charged on the busi- ness rates for providing security, and part of that is providing CCTV.” Functions of the Industrial Estates Partner-


ship, he adds, include monitoring intruder alarms as well as CCTV, and undertaking pa- trols of the industrial estates. Between the two clusters of workstations


there’s plenty of space for expansion, giving the control room capacity for taking on new clients in the future. Its mechanical and electrical en- gineering is designed to support 18–19 desks, twice as many as are installed at present. “We built it to BS 7499, which is the stand-


ard for guarding”, says Paul. “It isn’t an alarm receiving centre; it’s a lesser standard than that because it’s only a CCTV control room. But it’s still of reasonable construction. For example, we’ve got airlock doors. We have got intruder alarms all the way round the perimeter of the building. All the exits are covered by CCTV. We’ve got anti-ram upstands, so that some- body can’t just ran their vehicle into the control room. “Obviously we also need comms. Tere’s


diversely-routed comms into the room; we’ve got telephones routed separately, we’ve got ra- dio, et cetera, et cetera – all to meet that BS 7499 standard.”


Drilling down Display of the pictures and mapping and re- mote control of the cameras are all handled by the Synergy software from Synectics, a com- mon choice in today’s CCTV control rooms. “Te system is used for everything – logging


your report, logging your faults, telephone di- rectory, everything is put into Synergy”, Paul continues. “It’s a one-stop shop, if you like, for everything to do with CCTV. Every keystroke the operator makes is all logged and it’s fully auditable. “We start from a large town centre map and


we can drill down, whether it’s Bolton or Farn- worth, or any of the internal buildings. Our Civic Centre buildings are all mapped, with the camera positions marked. “It’s a touchscreen, but there’s multiple ways


of controlling the system: we can control it by the mouse, by the keyboards, the joystick. If you go on to camera control, there’s ways of doing it with your finger.” Te associated radios include a VHF single-


channel system used by security staff of NCP, which not only operates the control room but runs Bolton’s off-street car parking, including its multi-storey car parks. Te guards use them for attending to the ticket machines, report- ing faults and dealing with incidents in the


LAND mobile October 2011 19


car parks. On-street parking is outsourced to a contractor, NSL, for which there is a separate VHF channel. In addition, the town centre has a trunked radio system, supplied by Servicom. Tis is used for a shop-watch scheme by day and by a pub-watch scheme for the ‘night-time economy’. Besides these, the control room has access to


two police talkgroups on the Airwave network, Kilo 1 and Kilo 2, through which the operators can collaborate with local police in monitor- ing and dealing with incidents. Paul comments that there’s a huge value to the town in this in- stant connection with the police. “Te opera-


tor at their operations room can actually come to us and say: ‘What can you see?’ We can be watching an incident before they actually get there and be pinpointing individuals who are the perpetrators of a particular crime, as the police turn up on scene.... Tat saves a huge amount of police time.” Pictures can also be relayed to the police sta-


tion and can be fed direct to the town’s emer- gency planning room too.


Radio control To use the radio systems, the control room operators turn to a separate monitor on their


Bolton’s town hall: main servers for the CCTV system are located here. A fibre ring links it to other council sites, including the area’s new CCTV control room close by


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52