PUBLIC SURVEILLANCE

PUBLIC SURVEILLANCE


Public Surveillance today being used across the country as a whole is based on 3 types of CCTV surveillance

1. Public or Street based CCTV – In this Public Intersections and roads have Cameras installed on Electrical Poles or Buildings to monitor open public areas like streets and intersections.
2. Private Enterprise CCTV – In this Private organisations employ CCTV Cameras to monitor their premises and entrances.
3. Public Transport Areas – In this Public Transport areas are put under surveillance like Bus Stations, Airports, Railways Stations.

The Need for Public or Street based CCTV systems has grown rapidly in recent times and a number of cities have deployed cameras in hundreds and thousands to monitor these street and critical public areas. While the deployment has been universal the desired levels of surveillance has not been met at most of these areas due to various factors. Let us examine some of the challenges the enforcement bodies have faced & face while dealing and deploying with CCTV systems.



Problem Areas

1. Lack of Experts to advise on the deployment and most civic bodies have to fall back on vendors to provide the knowledge base and thus are driven by the local vendors available who may or may not be the best to advise in such situations.
2. Infrastructure requirements which pose the biggest problem.
3. Lack of Knowledge about technology which makes public tendering a serious problem by compromising on technology at the very first step.
4. Time process taken to finalise projects makes technology adopted for implementation outdated by the time the tender is awarded.
5. Technology implemented often is not upgradeable or scalable and thus restricts the law enforcement agency from adding additional resources or features.
6. Recorded footage quality is so poor that often nothing can be deciphered and the footage is of no use
7. Agencies not accountable for providing proper support during the Defect Liability Period and also not able to provide for proper post installation maintenance.
8. Staff are not properly trained to handle and run the systems installed.

Understanding the Problem


The biggest benefit that CCTV brings to the table is the ability to review an incident and playback the incident. The ability to do this means that images need to be stored for a reasonable amount of time and such incidents be archived for future reference. For such creditable information to be stored and played back the images need to be foremost of an acceptable resolution capable of clear identification and also irrefutable from an evidence point of view.

Transmission of such images over networks or communication devices over fibre / media poses the next challenge from a Public Surveillance perspective. To understand the first challenge of resolution we must first examine the type of cameras being used and the challenges we have to surmount.



Standard Resolution


Most times the resolution of recording used in Public Surveillance system is either 4CIF or D1. This is normally not sufficient a resolution to replay clear images due to the fact that most times cameras are placed at a height and the concentration of pixels does not provide for clear identification thus rendering the images as useless for evidence purposes. Additionally with the use of PTZ Camera ( Cameras which can move and remotely be zoomed ), the basic incident is overlooked as the Camera is pointing to another direction from the area of incident. Furthermore cameras which are used are of standard resolution (D1) and are fitted with wide angle lenses which further reduce the pixel density of the given subject within the field of view.



SOLUTION


Megapixel Cameras provides for greater density of images and thus allow for better forensic inspection and thus one can digitally zoom into specific areas of the image with little loss of definition to capture faces and license plates or objects left behind.


Additionally Megapixel cameras provide for better analytics to be performed for certain application which form part of Public Surveillance.


Megapixel camera lower cost of installation by reducing the number of cameras, reduced number of licenses, reduced number of network ports and thus reduced cabling.


Megapixel cameras also provide for replacing traditional Standard resolution PTZ camera with a Single High Definition Camera for example a 16 Megapixel camera will complete remove the need for a standard resolution PTZ Camera.


In low light conditions Megapixels cameras offer better resolution benefits compared to Standard Resolution Cameras.


Clearly Megapixel Cameras are ideal Public Surveillance application devices and can reduce the overall cost of the entire surveillance project. The Indirect benefits include reduced operator fatigue due to reduced number of cameras, reduced maintenance cost and reduced maintenance manpower.

****************************