IndigoVision's integrated IP Video CCTV system is providing monitoring for a traffic calming system in the Belgian city of Antwerp. The CCTV system monitors a series of automated bollards that regulate traffic on a number of the city's streets, alerting the Antwerp Police to malfunctions, accidents and acts of vandalism.
The bollards can be lowered automatically during pre-determined hours or when buses and trams pass using on-board transponders. Local residents and other authorised people can gain access using a smart card reader or by entering a pin code via a keypad. The access control system shares the same network as the IP Video for communication back to the local traffic centre that is the equipment hub for the project. The CCTV video is then relayed to the Antwerp Police over a fibre IP-network some 10Km away, where it is monitored and recorded. The traffic system was installed by TV Vialis-Paque, a joint venture between Vialis Traffic BV and Yvan Paque which was created specifically for this project.
The police operators use IndigoVision's ‘Control Center' IP Video and Alarm Management software to view live and recorded video from the cameras monitoring the bollards. IndigoVision's MPEG-4 based compression technology ensures that high-quality video and data can be transmitted over large distances with minimal impact on the available bandwidth, without image degradation and with negligible latency. This means that the operators can view video images that are as good as analogue and have smooth PTZ camera control even though their monitoring centre is located 10km from the cameras. The high-quality video allows the police to easily identify the licence plate number of vehicles that have been involved with incidents or that have damaged the bollards. Another ‘Control Center' workstation has been installed at the local traffic centre for set-up and maintenance.
IndigoVision's IP Video system removes the need for complex and costly switching matrices as used in traditional analogue systems and replaces them with a virtual matrix. The virtual matrix allows any camera to be viewed and recorded from any point on the network - a truly flexible and scalable solution. Antwerp Police have put this flexibility to good use by using the system to transmit video from an additional 14 CCTV cameras that are part of an existing standalone analogue CCTV system based at the local traffic centre.
Recording of the traffic bollard camera footage is achieved using five standalone IndigoVision Network Video Recorders (NVRs) again installed at the police control centre. These record all cameras continuously at 4SIF for up to 7 days. The cameras are IndigoVision's high-end external IP domes which are connected directly to the network. The integral 8000 transmitter/receiver in the IP dome utilises the built-in Actively Control Framerate (ACF) feature to reduce the amount of data that is transmitted over the network and therefore that is ultimately recorded. ACF analyses the camera scene and reduces the video frame rate during periods of inactivity. The IP dome also has a digital input which is connected to a local status signal from the bollard access control unit. This alerts the police operators to any malfunctions via ‘Control Center' alarms.
Additional rack-mounted 8000 transmitter/receiver modules are installed in the local traffic centre to convert the 14 analogue camera feeds to MPEG-4 digital video for transmission over the network to the remote Antwerp Police centre. Here further 8000 modules convert the digital video back to analogue for display on monitors.
