Crime in Pleszew fought by IndigoVision IP CCTV

07 Feb 10

The Polish city of Pleszew has seen a dramatic drop in crime following an upgrade from its analogue CCTV to a complete IP video solution.

By Brian Sims

The new system, supplied by specialist IndigoVision, now affords the local police extended coverage, excellent evidential quality video and the ability to improve their incident response levels.

Speaking to a regional newspaper on the installation of the new surveillance system, Pleszew City Council spokesperson Marcin Konieczny said: “The new system fully meets the Council’s high expectations, and the crime rate has dropped significantly from the moment it was installed. The City Council is now planning to expand the system with additional cameras by the end of the year.”

The challenge for the Council was to increase coverage of the city’s surveillance, while at the same time improving video quality. This was not possible with the original analogue system.

Shortening the prosecution process

The evidential quality video delivered by IndigoVision’s system has enabled the police to identify people involved in criminal activity and parking infringements, and has also shortened the prosecution process, saving the authorities time and money.

Pleasingly, the police service has also noticed a dramatic drop in acts of vandalism and graffiti in the monitored areas.

The equipment and technical support for the project was supplied by IndigoVision’s authorised partner MIWI-URMET Sp z.o.o., who used local systems integrator ABM Alarm for the installation.

Twelve cameras were installed across the city on a dedicated fibre network. The cameras were mainly external PTZ models, with four cameras being used from the original system.

Latency is very low

IndigoVision’s advanced video compression ensures that minimum bandwidth is required to stream high quality video across the network. This also means that latency is very low, allowing the PTZ cameras to be smoothly operated (even when controlling those cameras furthest away, which are located five kilometres from the police station Control Room).

Police officers use a dual monitor workstation running ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Security Management Software, to monitor the cameras and to view and analyse recorded video. This is archived on an IndigoVision Windows-based Network Video Recorder (NVR). The NVR boasts 2 Tb of storage, affording the police 30 days of recordings.

The analogue cameras are connected to the network using IndigoVision’s transmitter/receiver modules, which also incorporate hardware inputs that can monitor external equipment. In an innovative use of this feature, local peripherals such as network devices and power supplies are monitored for failure through the digital input at each camera.

In the event of a failure, an alarm is raised in ‘Control Center’ that automatically drives the nearest PTZ to a preset position to view the equipment. This allows operators to check that the failure is not being caused through vandalism.