What is it?
What is it?
A municipality is usually understood as a city or town. Generally formed by a municipal charter they are self- governed and hold elections for public servants that represent the citizens. Services for the citizens are usually provided by departments formed by the municipality. Although departments provide unique services they usually have capabilities provided by the municipality to improve their services to its citizens.
Many municipal departments have deployed video surveillance to assist in their process to provide services. These assets are often not attended to regularly and over time either fail or do not produce the surveillance video they were intended to deliver. The low cost of these lead to proliferation of many disparate video surveillance systems, and often they are no longer under the manufacture’s support. Much of the time with employee turnover these systems are forgotten or simply are not effective and thus abandoned.
IP Video Surveillance provides a fundamental change to address the shortcomings of independently deployed video surveillance. With the proper planning of network infrastructure and management abilities in place to ensure reliable operation it is possible to provide “Mission Essential” video surveillance services to any or all municipal departments. The proper implementation will unify assets, reduce cost, optimize processes, and improve services.
Does geography play a role in Municipal Video Surveillance Systems?
A significant challenge for any Municipal Video Surveillance System is coverage out to the City’s boundaries. Advances in camera technology may partially address this, however it is necessary to develop a strategic plan to extend the surveillance network as necessary to meet surveillance requirements. Leverage has considerable experience assisting municipalities in the development of a strategic network plan.
How do School Districts play a role in Municipal Surveillance?
Leverage highly encourages discussion between schools and municipalities for a number of benefits. Working together may increase the network footprint of a municipality. Public safety may be able to improve response capabilities. In addition to potentially sharing network asset cost, additional cost savings may be presented by shared cameras and network video recorders. Improved communication between school district and public safety may save lives.
What about Public Works or Traffic Engineering
Extending the reach of a municipal video surveillance system includes participation by as many departments as possible. Public works and Traffic Engineering are two departments that may have network resources extending to locations where public safety or other departments may need visual awareness through the use of cameras. Although the use of a surveillance camera may vary between public works and public safety the same asset may be able to provide for the needs of both.
What makes Municipal Video Surveillance different from video surveillance in general?
Unlike traditional data networks, Surveillance video networks support consistent data transmission with a fluctuating load yet still have an expectation of high availability and reliability.
Data Networks
Traditional data networks support “burst traffic” in which many transceivers send data across the network in short, momentary periods. Under these conditions, bandwidth demand is very predictable, rarely does network load ever come close to actual network capacity. As such, it is a common practice for network engineers and service providers to safely “oversubscribe” a network – banking on the fact that even during peak usage times, the “bursty” nature of data network traffic will never truly exceed the actual available bandwidth. In such an environment, it is not uncommon for short network outages to go undetected by both users and administrators. Wireless link failures, device reboots, and network congestion may often manifest and “self-heal” before anyone notices the issue even exists. However, in a network supporting Video Surveillance operations – link failures, network congestion, and device malfunction will not only result in the loss of forensic video, it noticeably inhibits VSS operators from successfully completing mission critical duties related to proactive surveillance monitoring.
Surveillance Networks
Surveillance nodes are “always on” devices. They record 24/7/365 and in an environment in which the receivers (NVRs and Viewing Stations) are typically on a different network segment than the majority of the surveillance nodes (cameras.) As a result, managing consistent, high impact data transmission from many devices can be a nearly insurmountable task. The nature of video surveillance traffic demands a reliable peer-to-peer network architecture to provide the bandwidth needed for sub-second latency video. What’s more – peer-to-peer architecture allows IP Surveillance Engineers to shape network traffic along “backhaul” paths to ensure network capacity exceeds actual demand. In the surveillance network – oversubscription is not an option – and neither is backhaul link failure, as it will often affect several, if not many, surveillance nodes. The whole purpose of developing a Municipal VSS is to provide real-time, always on video access to areas requiring enhanced public safety services. A surveillance node is only effective if it is available when it is needed, and because that moment of necessity is so unpredictable, it can be said that high availability is the most important feature of the Municipal Video Surveillance System.
Dynamic Health Monitoring
While edge recording may solve the problem of recording interruption due to network anomaly – this offers no solution to the availability of real-time live video. Detect System Monitoring and Reporting Technology equips VSS operators and administrators with a powerful tool to ensure optimal system performance and availability. The Detect SMART service not only keeps system administrators and users appraised of regular system performance data, but it provides insight into problems that may be looming on the horizon. Historical performance logging creates priceless empirical data that illustrates how surveillance assets are actually performing within the surveillance environment. Of course, OEMs provide predictive tools (design tools, calculators, storage estimators, etc.) but the information provided by these tools is generic in nature and only to be used in “estimation” of performance. SMART’s empirical reporting system provides accurate, actual environment tested data that can immediately provide administrators with predictive information regarding the accuracy of system design and expectation. Most importantly, SMART enables VSS integrators and administrators to remedy system vulnerabilities before they become system failures!
How Do I Pay for It?
Often times, at the very start of a Surveillance System deployment, the law enforcement agency will take the lead in securing funding for a pilot or proof of concept operation. Traditionally, law enforcement has access to grant funds distributed by Local, State and Federal Administrations such as Homeland Security, Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and many others. In addition, law enforcement has access to asset forfeiture funds which have been used in the past for projects of this kind. Once the pilot program is established it is crucial to seek support and buy-in from other municipal departments and agencies having a common interest in the distribution of video and data throughout the municipality. This support transitions a standalone surveillance system into a “City-Wide Mission Essential” component which will then be shared by all of the stakeholders. Once a unified City-Wide IP Surveillance system becomes “Mission Essential” the sources of funding multiply with each additional department.
Disparate and unmanaged surveillance systems are neither an effective nor useful tool for long-term success. Inclusion of video surveillance within the “process” requires a method for continuously validating performance and functionality. Maintaining assets and providing services for local departments, schools, libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply, waste management and law enforcement are enhanced with video surveillance. When the individual entities that make up a municipality choose to adopt mission essential video surveillance, they pool their budgets to create a unified surveillance system. Thus, instead of a single police department purchasing surveillance for the entire city, the budgets for every individual contributor are added in to cover the cost of an integrated system, leading to more assets yet streamlining management and maintenance.
Smart cities are looking to integrate information and communication technology to improve communication between citizens and their government. “Mission Essential” video surveillance ensures a cost effective, optimized method of delivering services to citizens. Smart cities that develop a unified surveillance system are better equipped to respond to challenges while optimizing resource usage.
Unification of surveillance cameras not only allows each department to share resources, but reduces operational expenses across the board. These unified systems are called Public Video Surveillance Systems (PVSS). While the PVSS networks enhance citizen safety and quality of life, other city departments build out IP networks to support the services they provide. Typically traffic engineering, schools, and city utility departments build IP surveillance systems in the shadows of Public Video Surveillance Systems. It may seem a daunting task to merge these efforts—and in truth it is not easy—nonetheless, several cities have successfully deployed Unified Video Surveillance systems and enjoyed the benefits of a unified system. Check with the references (link) we’ve provided to see how others have made this possible.
Unified video surveillance reduces costs and resource consumption while creating the need for reliable operation. Consolidation of resources includes the obvious surveillance cameras, but also extends to networking and video retention costs. Further cost savings are realized by a reduction in maintenance and support, all while improving services.
Case Study: Redlands, CA
With four patents related to Municipal IP Surveillance and over 10 years of conceptualizing, designing and deploying Municipal IP Surveillance Systems, Leverage Information Systems IP Surveillance Practice Director Ray Leblond is something of an expert in the field. He recounts the story of how one city embarked on becoming the standard that many others have followed:
It was November 2006 when I met Jim Bueermann, the Chief of Police for Redlands, California. Chief Bueermann had a vision for using surveillance cameras to assist the Police Department with suppression, prevention, and intervention in criminal and nuisance activity. He wanted surveillance cameras in downtown Redlands, and he wanted them in place before the holidays! The surveillance cameras were installed, and very shortly thereafter they aided in a DUI arrest. Later, as a robbery was in progress, they provided awareness for the responding officer. Those were two almost instant victories, and it was “game on” from that point forward. Surveillance cameras and officers became the standard response, and a bond developed between dispatchers and patrol officers.
At a time of limited public safety resources, Redlands decided that technology was the answer. Unification of surveillance assets and proactive use drove the effort to actively intervene in criminal activity before or during the incident. Chief Bueermann vision included monitoring surveillance cameras in real-time and providing a running narrative to a responding patrol officer.
Chief Bueermann’s vision required a champion that came in the person of Lt. Russ Dalzell. Technology can be challenging enough, but without buy-in of the dispatchers it was clear that real-time response would not be possible. Over the years a position was staffed by civilians and light duty officers that would hear radio traffic and many times would be the first to have eyes on scene. As they tracked the activity the dispatchers just need to look up on their monitor to provide an improved narrative to the responding officer. Lt Dalzell shares his challenge to gain dispatcher acceptance.