The Wireless City

At all levels, it seems, Governments are constantly looking for ways in which to improve communication of their ideas and policies, and how they interact and respond to the needs of specific communities. The reason is simple. There’s a growing public perception that Government – at both national and local levels – is bureaucratic, inaccessible and inefficient. Services are seen as fragmented. Bound up in masses of complex, often frustrating administrative procedures. Too often, services fail to deliver.

Factors one and all that have weakened the trust between populus and politician, a truism exemplified by countless surveys of public opinion wherein the general apathy, mistrust, suspicion and, at times, downright hostility towards local Council management underpins many a voter’s views.

The current Government, of course, has tried to turn the tide by employing the Spin Doctors, papering over the gaping cracks in service provision with carefully chosen words of wisdom. Nonetheless, any lack of substance in policy making will always shine through no matter how many fancy words are tripped from the red tongues deployed on New Labour’s front benches.

The key task for Government at the local level – where, after all, national policies are meted out in microcosm – is to improve the delivery of services and engage with communities and the business fraternity alike. Undoubtedly, the Internet has created the ideal forum in which such interactions and communication can take place.

When all’s said and done, the World Wide Web is a cost-effective and plentiful resource. However, local authorities must do more than send information one way, from the Town Hall to the people. Rather, the greatest potential for the Internet in Government lies in the possibility of linking together the separate strands of municipal functions and services into a one-stop shop. Welcome to the world of e-Government.

Commendably, Westminster City Council has just kick-started an ‘e-revolution’ of its own in the heart of London’s West End, with a blueprint for what Councillor Simon Milton – leader of the Council – has aptly dubbed “The Wireless City” masterplan. Its roots lie in a challenging series of 20 separate initiatives that mark the Council’s fourth year of Civic Renewal and, together, will set a new standard – which chief executive Peter Rogers refers to as ‘The Westminster Standard’ – governing “excellent City management”.

The Council has pinpointed the need to reduce infrastructure costs and ongoing operational costs while still supporting the next generation of service delivery. There’s also a strong desire to increase Council staff productivity and create an holistic approach to street management (an element of which involves providing greater support to Westminster’s City Guardians, the dedicated Street Wardens tasked with tackling crime and disorder and clamping down on unlicensed activities). All of which can be achieved by harnessing the powers of the Internet.

Creating The Wireless City

From a security perspective, Westminster City Council made its first serious attempt to embrace CCTV a little less than two years ago, when the main camera scheme for Oxford Street, Regent Street and surrounding thoroughfares hoved into view. However, the video images produced by those predominantly Mark Mercer-supplied domes housing Grundig cameras – like many others of their ilk – can only be transmitted to one central location and monitored by dedicated staff at the Trocadero Centre, all of whom are under the charge of specialist CCTV projects manager Robert McAlister.

Nothing wrong with that, save for the fact that this set-up has often led to a situation whereby only a couple of security operatives at any one time are monitoring information relayed from as many as 90 different cameras dotted around Westminster. Make no mistake that this is an excellent CCTV operation. A leading edge implementation. However, it remains a tad inflexible.

Displaying great foresight, one of McAlister’s colleagues – information services networks manager Andrew Snellgrove – determined to look into the possibility of Westminster’s CCTV becoming an application that would operate over the corporate network in tandem with noise monitoring operations. His ideas running neatly alongside the edicts of The Wireless City, Snellgrove joined forces with network integrator Telindus, systems infrastructure specialist SkyNet and equipment suppliers Cisco Systems, DVTel and Intel to turn his dream of converging CCTV with wireless systems and data networking into reality.

Snellgrove takes up the story. “The ability to route video streams around a data network enables CCTV to be used for purposes where previously it was neither technically feasible nor cost-effective to do so,” he suggests.

“There are nearly 1,400 Westminster City Council officers whose jobs are at least in part street-based and public-facing. We really wanted to allow them to view live images while on the move rather than having to rely solely on the Control Room operators, together with providing ready-made access to various computer back office systems.”

‘Fast Start’ pilot in Soho

A so-called ‘Fast Start’ pilot project for The Wireless City is currently up-and-running in Soho, with a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) enabling CCTV and noise monitoring in Soho Square, Greek Street, Old Compton Street and Frith Street. In many ways this represents the perfect test bed, given that it’s difficult to install conventional CCTV cameras in the Soho area due to its maze of streets and alleyways.

“You would also have to dig up most of the roads to install fibres if you were contemplating a traditional CCTV installation,” adds Telindus’ surveillance business solutions manager Mark Bouldin. “Most end users will realise that tends to be quite expensive.”

So what does this innovative installation comprise, exactly? Its ‘heartbeat’ is the Cisco Aironet wireless network together with a Mobile Access Router. At present, this

uses the 802.11B licence-exempt wireless frequency (from Phase II of the project the 802.11G system will be deployed, offering even larger bandwidths of up to 54 Mbps).

Connected to the network are four dedicated cameras, all of them Spectra III dome systems developed by Pelco. A variety of video configurations have been trialled, using both MPEG2 and MPEG4 standards and running at speeds all the way down to 727 kbps.

“We wanted colour-mono, day/night capability and the maximum optical zoom,” stresses Bouldin. “We’re actually achieving 23:1, which means the cameras can see 54 metres under PSDB requirements for recognition and offers far better coverage.” Bouldin and Snellgrove also had to consider the weight of the dome camera units as they’re bolted-on to existing lampposts in the streets.

“Rather than viewing IP (Internet Protocol) solely as a communications tool, end users should view it as both a communications and virtual matrix tool,” chips in Bouldin. “Here, we’ve replaced the need for a traditional analogue matrix as the information generated by the IP cameras and noise monitoring systems is dispersed around the network. IP also replaces the need for recording. Andrew and his team can view video stored on the server located in the Soho Medical Centre at Soho Square, from the dedicated PC in the main Trocadero Control Room, other buildings on the corporate data network or from wireless devices on the street. It’s totally flexible.”

In practice, those wireless devices translate into notepads, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and laptop computers. Any individual with secure access to the Council’s data network can view live images and then control the dome cameras to suit surveillance needs. Those individuals might include the aforementioned City Guardians, enforcement managers tasked with checking building skips for potential fire hazards, highways officers (who monitor and administer roadworks in the Westminster area), licensing officers and the Council’s many social workers.

Interfacing with the police

“The Metropolitan Police have made use of our new system to view crime ‘hot spot’ areas,” continues Andrew Snellgrove. “For instance, we’ve had problems with a drug dealer who was selling drugs from a certain street corner on a regular basis. None of the original CCTV scheme’s fixed cameras could cover the area, so we moved one of the IP cameras to monitor the dealer’s business. The very next morning at around 3.00 am the Metropolitan Police officers monitoring the video stream were able to apprehend a suspect largely thanks to solid video footage of evidential quality.”

From start to finish, moving that IP camera took around three hours as opposed to fixed camera systems which would need months to be reconfigured (due to the cabling infrastructures, etc). The cameras used on the Westminster pilot project were also supplied pre-bracketed, further reducing the necessary install time. Such flexibility can prove crucial, as the above example shows.

It’s worth stressing once again that the infrastructure for the entire wireless corporate network operation is multi-service in nature, supporting video, telephony and data systems simultaneously. That being the case, the fact that the IP cameras are linked to PDAs and laptops renders CCTV far more reactive to events as they happen on the ground.

“We hear all the time about security needing to be proactive,” suggests Mark Bouldin, “but to be honest it’s reactivity that’s most important in this context.”

By way of example, in Westminster it has been simplicity itself to link the CCTV application to that for noise monitoring. “When an alarm is triggered as noise levels at a pub or club reach, say, 75 dB, this will send a message to the CCTV system which brings up the camera image for that location,” opines Bouldin. “What’s the cause of the noise? Is there a disturbance of some kind? You can see immediately, then transfer those images to the PDA of a Street Warden nearest to the scene who’s able to take immediate action.”

Indeed, the second phase of the project will see Help Points introduced at the bottom of lampposts where the IP cameras are located. Video images of the individual who has pressed the Help Point call button can be brought up on screen immediately, and they’ll be able to talk directly to the central station operator (and, subsequently, the police) to report an incident such as a fire, a robbery or perhaps a fight in the street. Video footage from the incident is then transmitted to mobile police units (or Westminster’s own CCTV vans which, until now, have been restricted to making use of images generated by on-board cameras alone).

“It’s a system that reduces the fear of crime for members of the general public in Westminster,” adds Bouldin, “and makes the entire surveillance operation totally reactive.”

How secure is ‘wireless’?

Given that IP CCTV is quite different to traditional CCTV (ie by definition it’s no longer a ‘closed circuit’ but an open loop), just how secure is such an operation from would-be hackers and cyber terrorists?

“When we first thought about the project we were only too aware of the security risks,” states Andrew Snellgrove. “We detected a significant number of 802.11 signals in the Soho area that were less than secure. You could easily have a ‘look around’ those networks simply by spoofing them.”

Tellingly, Snellgrove adds: “The main reason why certain wireless systems may not be totally secure is that those installing them haven’t planned them out to a professional standard. A multiple-level security system must be implemented.” Additional security features including VPN circuits and the obligatory firewalls – on top of unique log-in procedures – help secure the Westminster LAN.

The take-up of this kind of surveillance monitoring is no longer a question of whether or not it’s feasible from a technical point of view. Clearly, it is. It’s more to do with correlating end user needs and requirements, and those end users understanding the benefits to be had from ‘going wireless’. “The benefits are less tangible to correlate when you’re talking about a traditional CCTV system,” says Mark Bouldin. “It’s hard to pinpoint any return on investment, but that’s what Boards of Directors want to see before they decide to splash out on security systems.”

With wireless surveillance, it’s far easier to complete an initial cost benefit analysis. The financial outlay for a conventional CCTV system runs to approximately £40,000 per camera installed. For a wireless equivalent, the end user would be looking at parting with between £5,000 and £8,000 per camera. That’s five wireless cameras for the price of one. A pretty compelling argument before you’ve even begun to talk about the flexibility offered by IP. Illegal street traders and fly-posters, among others, could be stopped in their tracks.

“When the next phase of The Wireless City project is rolled out,” adds Andrew Snellgrove, “we can empower our mobile workforce with access to back office computer systems as well as video streams. Via the wireless-enabled portal devices, this will lead to increased portability which, in turn, helps to drive down costs. The Council officer will then have the facility to multi-task across multiple services.”

Where next for Westminster?

Other projects across the country have deployed wireless video, but the Westminster scheme is the first to coalesce with other communications uses. As Mark Bouldin rightly points out: “It’s a mindset. Andrew could just as easily have chosen to go with an extension to the existing surveillance system, but he didn’t. Now he’s reaping the benefits.”

There are plans to install another 50 IP cameras in the Westminster area that will ‘go live’ at the end of October. “They’ll cover the majority of Soho and the housing estates at Lisson Green and Churchill Gardens,” adds Andrew Snellgrove, who now looks after a network already boasting connectivity to over 100 different buildings.

Thankfully, Westminster’s bold decision to ‘go wireless’ means that the Council has at its disposal what might be termed ‘The Martini Solution’ to the security dilemma. An IP-based system that renders ‘Any time, Any place, Anywhere’ monitoring an operational entity rather than a pipe dream.