Port surveillance systems and equipment must be cost-effective, dependable, able to operate in potentially severe weather conditions in a maritime environment, require minimum maintenance and repair and have the availability of a prompt repair response when necessary.
This “shopping list”, which comes from Eric Olson, product management director of US-based video surveillance group PureTech, is a demanding one.
However, he says, in the rush to meet the requirements of new security legislation following September 11, many ports and marine facilities in the US – an presumably elsewhere – bought CCTV equipment that was readily available in the marketplace, much of which was not readily adaptable to extended exposure to the maritime environment, nor readily adaptable to the unique needs of different seaports.
“Due to their unique characteristics, ports cannot meet their needs by installing an ‘off-the shelf’ package,” he says.
“There is no lack of available security systems for ports to consider in their security plans, Systems range from intelligent video analytic systems, such as PureActiv, which can literally monitor and analyse hundreds of cameras without the need for operator interventions, to systems that can detect a human swimmer in the waterway.
“Such systems can insure the proper level of security, and provide the port with operational savings. However, the act of identifying security needs and matching those needs to current market security solutions is no small task for operations as large and complicated as is often the case with ports”.
Ports must give careful consideration to a variety of possibly conflicting factors and their interests are best served by firms that have a thorough understand of the considerations, as well as the technical expertise in the security/surveillance filed, says Mr Olson.
But ports can take comfort – the security providers seem to agree that old needn’t necessarily mean obsolete. CCTV equipment already in place can also be adapted as building blocks for an improved system.
On September 11 2001, Bob Lack was in charge of a local authority emergency control centre in the UK. He experienced first-hand the demands for enormous quantities of CCTV footage by various agencies and the need for even wider use of surveillance systems that provided meaningful evidential quality pictures – and meaningful is, perhaps, the key word here.
Having been an end user of CCV since 1996, a year ago he turned service provider, as managing director of CCTV specialist CVSS Ltd. |
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