Benefits associated with remote monitoring include alarm verification, improved productivity, improved security management as well as improved management of armed response services. By allowing management to access remote sites on alarm, CCTV becomes a proactive response tool instead of a post event investigative solution.
“With real-time access to CCTV video motion detection (VMD) signalling and video streaming via PDA, cellphone and PC, one can accurately verify images and data immediately, ensuring that you don’t waste time responding to false alarms - which account for over 90% of alarms,” notes Chertkow.
Chertkow says that SA companies are moving towards such solutions because they offer significant cost and productivity benefits: “CCTV surveillance video was typically run on a separate network or over ISDN in the past, as it tends to interfere with normal data traffic by causing data and transaction loss.
“However, more companies are now adopting solutions allowing them to leverage the existing WAN infrastructure without the historical drawbacks of such an approach, which means that there are no additional monthly costs for remote surveillance.”
The SerVision product, for example, is a true narrowband solution capable of delivering video at rates from 6Kbps to 2Mbps. These systems allow operators to deliver up to 10 live video feeds over a standard 64Kbps link, finally making centralised and remote monitoring an affordable reality.
It becomes simple and affordable, for example, for a control room in Johannesburg to watch over video feeds from Sandton, Durban, Pretoria, and Cape Town. The value proposition of centralised, off-site monitoring includes saving on control room staff and better facilities management.
“These state-of-the art mobile video CCTV monitoring solutions really do take the security industry into its next phase. Apart from standard Diginet links, companies that use this technology can access remote CCTV video monitoring over cellphone (GPRS or 3G), ADSL, MyWireless, or any other IP-based WAN link,” concludes Chertkow.
