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The University of Dundee's Medical School is a semi-public space with a very high number of visitors … and with so many patients, students and visitors on site, it provided a perfect cover for criminals.

Part of the Ninewells Hospital complex, it has NHS Trust and university employees working alongside one another.

As the site is designed to be accessible, the research and diagnostic lab was especially susceptible.

Said Guy Hickman, the university's Estates Manager:
"On this site it's not always clear where the hos-pital ends and the medical school begins. The laboratories are a maze of corridors and are very close to public areas. It isn't difficult for the crimin-ally minded to take advantage of the site's design."

Theft had been an issue on the site and there was also a growing concern about staff safety. The university was also obliged to demonstrate to insurers that they were taking steps to prevent loss.

Campus Upgrade
Scottish Communication Systems were approached to tender for new CCTV system specifically to protect the research and diagnostic laboratory.

Founded in 1980, the company is Scotland's largest independent installer of communications, CCTV, access control and intruder systems.

The installation was part of a much broader campus wide security and lighting upgrade by consulting engineers BDH Partnership.

Scottish Communication Systems' Brian Hibbert and Brian Davidson, acting as specialist contractors to electrical contractors DH Morris, provided technical input into the original design.

Their input improved the installation without adding costs to the project.

Brian Davidson, SCS Sales Manager, said the areas covered by the CCTV system, are spread over three floors, and subject to "extremes" of people movement.

"At one end of the spectrum are areas which, at times, experience very high flows of people. That means if individuals are to be monitored effectively, very high recording frame rates are essential.

"Other areas within the complex are visited infrequently and we felt that here a recording solution that incorporated motion detection and event triggered search capabilities could prove the best option. "

The secondary monitoring station was located three and a half miles away at the main university campus site and the new system had to be capable of using the existing fibre optic link between the two sites.

"Although the presence of security staff will always be an important and very visible aspect of security at the hospital, we also recognise that modern recording equipment offers certain capabilities that manned security cannot deliver, such as certainty with regard to image capture. This also affected the system design."

There were three key aspects of the installation: image capture, recording and monitoring.

Image capture
To date, 88 colour Vista mini domes (VFD4V9C) have been installed with more due to come on line. The majority of these are positioned in corridor environments with one dome covering each door to capture a head and shoulder image of the person entering or leaving, with a third dome capturing a long shot of the corridor. This combination of shots ensures that a complete movement of the person is recorded to high quality identification standard.

  Although not a covert system, the mini domes' discreet nature means many people appear to be totally unaware of their presence.

Recording
A small control room houses 20 Vista Triplexâ„¢ Columbus Digital Video Recorders (VC04Te-40), each of which is connected to a Vista VAIDe (Vista Array of Independent Disks/Ethernet) storage unit, currently installed with 8x160 GB hard drives providing a massive 1.28 terabytes (TB) of digital storage.

• (It is possible to upgrade each VAIDe unit with larger hard disk's as the technology becomes available. At this time a maximum of 8x 250GB hard disks can be installed per VAIDe giving a total storage capacity of 2TB per unit). 
  
• An important consideration when installing on a site such as this is "not putting all your eggs into one basket"!

Not all cameras covering the same sector are wired into the same DVR. This means that in the unlikely event of a DVR failing, parts of the sector can still be viewed and recorded.

Also in the control room is a Baxall Pyramid 112 camera matrix system, a PY2 keyboard and a 14" colour Vista monitor. Recording is protected against power failure by a comprehensive UPS system. Individual camera power failure is also covered by alarms linked to the system's matrix controller.

Brian Hibbert, Technical Manager of SCS said the intensive nature of the recording set-up was deliberate: "The standard image capture rate is five frames per second per camera. That seems incredibly high, but it's essential given the high traffic flows we encounter on the site."

The installers chose the Triplexâ„¢ Columbus DVR because of its functionality, flexibility, and relatively narrow bandwidth requirements. It has three simultaneous operations - recording video from multiple cameras to an internal hard drive whilst simultaneously providing viewing of live and playback images on the same monitor.

The units provide top quality images at selectable recording rates up to 50 Pictures Per Second (PPS) and extensive search and analysis functionality with instant playback as recording continues. This includes colour coded graphical representation of the Columbus's internal hard disk for easy and swift trace of alarms and events or detailed search criteria by time & date, activity, event, alarm, text & camera input.

Of particular value to the University is the motion hotspot function that allows users to highlight an area of view and then search for previous motion activity within this area.

John Gilchrist, University Of Dundee Estates & ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½s Services Co-ordinator and Project Manager said the project was planned and designed with regard to the problems that would be encountered when working in such a restricted area -from the removal of ceilings to the installation of long runs of cable.

"We can add new cameras and expand the system at will as demand dictates within minimum disruption to the University.

"Also, the technology gives us considerable flexibility and control … during the day the level of activity means that recording is continuous, but at night a different regime is called for with recording triggered by alarm only."

Triggered by an alarm event, the Triplex DVR is able to begin storing to disk by recalling the previous five seconds of images leading up to the event. This is possible because, in alarm mode, the DVR temporarily holds all 25 images per second for a pre-set time interval.

"If no event occurs, the images that are older than the time interval are then recorded at the timelapse specification – say five per second. If an event happens, all frames are recorded, and this full recording continues for a pre-set period after the event. This guarantees that we capture the whole sequence of the event, before and after, without having to record hours of inactivity. This has longer term maintenance benefits for the system as a whole."

Monitoring
Primary responsibility for monitoring the system rests with the security office at the University's main site in the city centre. Equipment consists of a Vista 17 inch colour monitor, a PY2 keyboard and a Vista timelapse VCR that allows the security operator to commence instant real-time/ timelapse recording as required. In the main hospital reception there is a Vista colour monitor which acts as a reminder to hospital visitors that the site is under surveillance.

The majority of monitoring is undertaken in the Estates Office where WaveReader software supp-lied with the Triplexâ„¢ Columbus DVR, provides staff with extensive search capabilities across the whole system. This operation is due to be transferred to the security officer's responsibilities in the near future.

The CCTV system is run over its own twisted pair network installed for the purpose, but for viewing and searching already recorded images, the WaveReader software runs across the University's own ethernet local area network. The motion search feature had proven to be one of its most useful functions, said John Gilchrist. "Simply by highlighting specific 'motion grids' on the screen, it is possible to search for all activity in that area over a specified time period. This very quickly results in a list of images to view."

Said Guy Hickman: "From the University's perspective the system is a considerable success … There were no significant implementation issues at all despite this being a very busy working environment which cannot shut down for a pro-ject like this. The standard of installation is very high and all parties to the project have performed excellently. We anticipate this may become the standard installation specification for future University CCTV projects."