27 Feb 2009

 Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania
 Arts college fitted out with inspired security systems from Bosch
Industry:

Education

End User:

Franklin & Marshall College is a highly competitive, national, liberal arts college of 2,000 students located in the historic and vibrant city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The 180-acre campus includes functional and inspiring academic facilities and a supportive housing system. Founded in 1787, the college today is known as a place where the liberal arts and sciences are connected to the real world, where innovation meets practicality, and where students of high promise are engaged in the hard work of having an impact on the world.

Business Objective:

The campus environment of Franklin & Marshall College is inextricably linked to its surrounding community. So when the city of Lancaster experienced a rash of vandalism incidents near college property, campus security officials took action. Although the incidents were not located on school grounds, they spurred Franklin & Marshall's 19-member Public Safety team to find additional ways to monitor the exterior of the school's campus and implement a deterrent to potential vandals.

Solution:

More than 20 of Bosch's AutoDome Modular Cameras now offer a new layer of security while blending in with Lancaster's picturesque tree-lined streets. The security integrator and College public safety officials worked with local officials to use decorative streetlight poles and traffic light arms to mount the cameras, which were encased in special housing to blend in with the street's décor. The AutoDome Modular cameras were selected because of the quality, reliability and cost-effectiveness of the cameras in a high-volume, street monitoring setting.

 Bosch Security at Franklin & Marshall College
Bosch CCTV solution aided college to strenghen security system

To create the camera system infrastructure, dedicated fibre circuits were run from four facilities on the campus' western and northern borders to Public Safety headquarters, housed on the south side of the campus. Video signals from analogue cameras and encoders are looped through an Allegiant Matrix Switch and sent to a Bosch DiBos hybrid DVR for recording. Two 8-terabyte SCSI direct-attached disk arrays provide highly reliable RAID 5 protection for the college's archived video.

College public safety officials can review and export video clips of incidents from a dedicated DiBos workstation in the Captain's office. Through a series of community meetings as well as the use of strategically posted signage that indicate the area is under surveillance, students and residents know the cameras are working to ensure their safety.

Result:

"The goal for this project was to increase campus security's eyes and ears by maximizing technology and minimizing the need to add a uniformed presence," said Chris Algard, director, Security & Life Safety for Tri-M Group. "Using Bosch cameras and video recording technology allowed us to achieve that objective very effectively."

The surveillance system is also expected to grow as the college nears completion of a large construction project that includes new residence halls and a retail complex.