Network cameras and video servers from Axis Communications, the global leader in network video, have been installed by Arthur McKay at The University of Aberdeen- one of Scotland's premier universities with more than 500 years of history. The university recently embarked on a major new building programme to upgrade and extend facilities for the 14,000 students that are now enrolled there.
Working with security integration firm Arthur McKay, a total of 55 cameras have been deployed across a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) set up to carry the university's surveillance data traffic only. A total of 35 existing analogue cameras which had been operating across a total of four standalone CCTV systems, have now been centralised onto the university's VLAN via 10 AXIS 241Q (Quad) Video Servers.
The surveillance system has also been extended to provide more comprehensive surveillance in vulnerable areas including cark parks. A total of 20 AXIS 233D+ (Dome) PTZ Network Cameras have been deployed to enable this.
All surveillance images are now transferred, via the fibre optic cables linking all buildings, throughout the campus to a new 12 Tera Byte (TB) RAID 5 SCSI storage device located in the university's new, larger control room. This device holds 14 days of video surveillance recordings. Also on this device is the Milestone Enterprise network video recording software Version 6.0e with Smart Client, which is used to manage and view recorded images. Cameras are generally set up to provide 4CIF (704x756) resolution images at 10 frames per second generating 9 TB of storage over a two-week period. The total cost of the upgrade and extension of the system was £100,000.
Mr William Stevenson, assistant estates director, support services, estates section of The University of Aberdeen, explained, "It made good business sense to move our surveillance systems onto the network from the point of view of centralizing monitoring, enabling integration with other security systems and generally future-proofing our investment in surveillance."
Steve Gorski, managing director for Axis Communications (UK), commented, "The University of Aberdeen has made a simple business decision that the best way to get better control over their surveillance output is to bring existing systems together onto the network. Simultaneously they have created greater flexibility to expand, upgrade and improve the system. In short they have future-proofed their investment through moving to IP-Surveillance with Axis."
Axis Communications will be speaking at IP in Action Live (Chelmsford, Essex - 6 December 2007). Atul Rajput, technical sales manager will be speaking at their seminar programme with a presentation entitled "The Business Case - University of Aberdeen" at 14.30-15.00.
