Hidden benefits

But this, simultaneously, opens up a totally new, unexploited market for installers that perhaps could best be termed "operational surveillance" rather than "security surveillance".

Security surveillance CCTV, in its most common sense, relates to watching a site, an event, or people for the purpose of ascertaining that security is not breached. In the main, this involves on-site recording with the possible transmission to a remote site of video images of an alarm or a breach.

Operational surveillance CCTV, on the other hand, is a market segment that, arguably, could be as big as the security surveillance sector, but as yet has not really been born in the U.K. Certainly, so far, it has not been given much space in the industry press.

Rather than being concerned with security breaches, operational surveillance would have as its primary concern the monitoring of performance and activities within a multi-site organisation for the purpose of ensuring that these meet with prescribed or expected standards of that organisation.

Check on shop display remotely
Consider a client who is a multiple retailer. Typically, there is a central head office from which a number of area managers operate with the sole purpose of checking that the shops display the goods, service the customers and sell to budgets, all in the manner prescribed.

But consider the time an area manager might be able to spend in any one shop in any one week, given that he or she usually has several shops to look after and given the difficulties of travelling from site to site. The chances of successfully overseeing the shop are, in reality, quite slim.

It must not be forgotten that most departures from a prescribed "norm" within a retail shop would arise not when the area manager is there but, rather, when he or she is on the road.

In an alternative arrangement, live or playback images, from strategically placed CCTV cameras in the shop, could be relayed over a telephone or broadband network to the central office, whenever required, continuously. Such images could also be relayed to a small hand-held PDA so allowing the area manager to view them whilst still on-the-road.

Add to this scenario the opportunity of operating the cameras from the central office, in order to follow a particular event happening in the shop, and suddenly we have a very powerful management tool which, to date, has not been fully recognised.

Suddenly, very effective operational monitor-ing can now take place from any remote location, allowing area managers to be freed up to tackle serious or important issues, perhaps in consequ-ence of such operational monitoring.

In a multi-site organisation, where each site has CCTV cameras and a video server / digital recorder which acts to record as well as to transmit these images to a remote location, either across ADSL/ Broadband, ISDN or PSTN, the central office can now:

• monitor the manner in which customers are served – from this, immediate corrective measures can be organised, including staff training

• monitor shop layouts and even determine from the office what changes are needed to improve the layout in order to improve traffic flow within the shop

• monitor the utilisation of staff, particularly in slack periods

• observe a given shop continuously in cases of suspected security issues

• playback images very easily and offer these to the police as evidence, in cases of staff abuse by customers

In a CCTV system linked to a digital recorder and video server, it is also very easy to add to it a till-scanning facility. Continuous digital recording of till transactions can therefore be achieved, alongside the recording of any event at the till which is outside of the normal, allowed activity.

Thus, if a "void" was not allowed, then the system could be programmed to generate an alarm signal to the digital server / recorder whenever a "void" was processed, such signal taking the form of either a number of frames of video, or a snap-shot, both of which would be recorded for viewing at any time, either locally or remotely.

Any of your clients with multi sites present you with a perfect chance to invoke ‘operational’ surveillance

Using the alarm facility to record abnormal transactions, allows the supervisor to review in playback just those alarm events, saving time in viewing total playback.

Opportunity for extra business
Given that recording for continuous periods of many days can be achieved, the exact number of days depending only upon the size of disk within the recorder, then reviewing events after they have happened becomes very easy.

The development described above, within a multi-site retailing environment, can be equally relevant to many other industries, where multiple-sites often arise, for example:

• hospitality industry

• care industry – both children and elderly

• leisure industry

• private homes where the owner is frequently away

• warehousing depots

• transport depots and the like

• housing schemes

• nightclubs

• port authorities

… and every (security) application where multiple site surveillance is required and where central control of a remote location is required Any of your clients who have multiple sites or require some form of central process or event monitoring present you with a perfect opportunity for invoking operational surveillance using digital video servers and recorders.

This is on top of the immediate opportunity of converting existing analogue CCTV systems to at least digital recorders, and at best digital video servers and recorders … so offering customers the new opportunity of accessing their existing CCTV system from anywhere in the world.

Nursery cams make difference
An excellent example of a non-surveillance application of digital CCTV borne out of opera-tional rather than security issues, exists within a chain of children's day nursery schools – Catherine House Day Nursery Schools, based in Birmingham.

Three years ago, the Nursery Principal Rita Howe-Douglas, decided she wanted to be able to view what was happening through-out the day at all of her nurseries.
There were two reasons:

• to allow her to observe actual activities within each nursery and so determine whether procedures and activities which were laid down were being adhered to

• to protect the staff from malicious allegations.

She stipulated that the images from each camera had to have a refresh that allowed every movement to be seen. This translated to a picture refresh of at least ten frames per second per camera.

After two years of unsuccessful demonstra-tions, she came across the VPON (Video Pictures over Networks) digital recorder and video server. This was a major step in the process of achieving the objective, as the VPON allowed both live and playback images to be viewed remotely at speeds that met the stipulated criteria.

The installation was completed in 2002 and the central office was immediately armed with live images from each of the nurseries, with the opportunity of image playback when required. Cameras were set to motion detection only, with 40 days of continuous recording.

  Said Mrs Howe-Douglas: "It has allowed me to monitor what is happening at each nursery and this, in turn, allows me to train the staff in the laid down procedures, as and when such training is required.

" This system has made a positive difference to the continuous delivery of quality within our nurseries, something that is very important to me." The system has also proven useful in deciding on customer complaints and other incidents.

She said the staff accepted the introduction of cameras without any objection and that the parents were thrilled that such a development had taken place.