HEALTH & SAFETY SECTION TITLE
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n ever-changing threat landscape necessitates a continuous requirement to protect our critical national infrastructure sites,
including oil and gas production plants. Many critical national infrastructure (CNI) sites are hazardous locations where the potential for combustible materials to cause explosion is a real threat. In such locations, any electrical equipment installed could produce an ignition source due to fluctuations in temperature or electrical arcing. And this includes the use of CCTV, and its modern successor, a network video camera system.
Te use of video camera technology to aid in the protection of many CNI sites and, in addition, to monitor operations for efficiency, and to ensure health and safety, is growing rapidly. It should be clear that installing any equipment, including network cameras, that is not regulation standard within such an environment would be potentially dangerous. Terefore, camera technology that is to be employed must be specifically designed for safe operation, complying with ATEX and IECEx standards, among others, depending on the region in question.
MITIGATING EXPLOSION RISK Using network cameras for the protection of hazardous areas may sometimes require them to be placed close to combustible materials. Housing customised IP cameras within a dedicated airtight enclosure removes any risk that the technology might present, making them completely safe to use in such environments. Tis means that as well as their use for perimeter protection at the edge of a site, or near entrance and exit points, they
PROTECTING HAZARDOUS AREAS
Lucas Young on using smart, explosion-protected cameras to monitor critical national infrastructure sites
can also be used deep within the heart of operations, very close to, or even inside machinery. Tere is a great demand for explosion-
protected cameras within a wide range of industries, both relating to our critical national infrastructure and otherwise, from food production with pressurised silos, to oil refineries, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and any other carefully controlled environments where an electrical spark could have serious implications.
Explosion-protected pan-tilt-zoom camera from Axis Communications
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www.engineerlive.com
HIGH QUALITY SURVEILLANCE AND ANALYTICS With specifically designed cameras and camera housings opening up the possibility for new and innovative security and surveillance applications within a number of location and environments, attentions must turn to the capabilities of the cameras themselves and their capacity for meeting need. Cameras intended
for such environments must be smart; capable of capturing excellent image quality regardless of lighting conditions, while minimising bandwidth and storage requirements. On-board analytics and deep learning capabilities mean that cameras can be trained to identify or to respond in a way that can be customised to individual locations or in accordance with industry requirements. Such examples include: the raising of
‘man-down’ alarms, proving invaluable in areas where lone workers operate, and the presence of gases or chemicals mean that any falls or injuries must be detected and reported immediately; temperature alarm cameras, used to detect unexpected sources of heat before they become fire; smoke detection solutions that issue an alert upon visual confirmation of smoke; and hard hat detection alarms triggered to warn of staff members who are not complying with regulations.
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