A watchful eye
Published: 18 January, 2006
CCTV means more than cameras and a man trying to stay awake.
One of the problems facing those charged with making shopping centres safer and more secure places for shoppers and retailers is that you can’t watch all of the people all of the time. Thanks however to advances in recording technology you can now come a good deal closer than might have been possible previously.
Until recently the modus operandi for keeping an eye on what was going on in a mall was to have a number of cameras located around a mall linked to a bank of video recorders. Some of the systems had a piece of kit called a multiplexer that would take the different strands that were being recorded and keep them in one place, but this was not without its faults.
As in almost every other area, CCTV security systems today are moving towards digital solutions. This has advantages in terms of efficiency and the space to accommodate a system.
Eddie McAlinden, business development manager for Intruder International, says that a problem for those keeping tabs on mall “incidents” is that non-digital installations have a tendency to yield tapes with broken images: “With digital cameras and recorders we can record 25 frames per second; effectively real time. Under the old system you might get a frame every couple of seconds,” he says.
While this may be fine for following a sequence of events over time it does mean that a lot is missed and for evidential purposes, the tape that you see can be almost valueless.
So how does it work in practice? Intruder International was awarded the contract to install a CCTV system into Princes Square, part of the East Kilbride shopping centre. The contract was to replace cameras, including monitoring, control and recording facilities within the control room.
This meant upgrading all the equipment and creating a system that would make “evidential” surveillance possibile. DVRs (digital video recorders) were installed to take the place of VCRs and the CCTV control system was replaced with a PELCO 32 by 6 (32 video inputs, 6 video outputs) matrix. Within the control room itself, TFT screens replaced the bulky monitors that preceded them. Which means that tracking a miscreant is now straightforward.
There was also the matter of making the cameras more discreet; keeping the sense of big brother to a minimum. Owing to the considerable reduction in equipment size when the switch to digital is made, the large smoked glass domes that characterise the surveillance attempts of many large retailers and malls can become a thing of the past. In Princes Square the cameras are still concealed behind domes, but these are so small as to leave shoppers (and presumably thieves) unaware of their presence.
The system in Princes Square has been in place for a little over a year, according to McAlinden and while initial installation costs are still higher than following the VHS route (rapidly becoming redundant,) there are potential cost savings over time.
On balance then, it would appear that there is much to be gained from going digital when considering CCTV and very little advantage in not doing so. Worth remembering that the only beneficiary of poor surveillance is the person doing something wrong.
