THE BASICS OF DESIGNING A CCTV SYSTEM

In order to maximise the benefits of your CCTV system it is important to establish some basic criteria as a starting point for the system design. The first of which is to define the problem and consider if CCTV is the most appropriate response. Given that the answer is “yes”, it is critical to establish the Operational Requirements (OR) of the system.

The basic model for an OR is to establish the following information.

• Site Plan – to identify areas of concern.
• Statement of the Problem.
• Stakeholder Liaison.
• Risk Assessment.
• Success Criteria.
• Determine the Technical Solution.

With the OR in place it is then possible to design the most appropriate CCTV solution. The second level of the OR must identify observation category of each camera. I.e. is it to monitor the area, detect a figure or recognise a known individual. There are five surveillance categories.

• Monitor and Control
• Detect
• Observe
• Recognise
• Identify

When this has been established, other factors need to be taken into considerations such as image quality, target speed, lighting and environmental conditions etc.

Finally, the response to CCTV information needs to be considered. Who will monitor it, where from, will they be dedicated to it. What training do they need and are there any legal issues associated with privacy and data protection.

With the Operational Requirements in place, it is important to establish the most appropriate technology to use. Does it need to be wall or ceiling mounted, vandal resistant, static or fully functional? Does it need to work in low light conditions or are there challenging lighting conditions such as high contrast areas?

Dependant on the camera choice a suitable lens needs to be selected. What size lens is required to achieve the surveillance category detailed in the OR? Does it need to be IR cut to work with infrared illumination?

It is important to establish which methods of signal transmission most suit the Operation Requirement. For example, fibre optic for long distance and secure transmission or IP on a LAN for integration.

Lighting is one of the fundamentals of CCTV design. Although with the advent of wide dynamic processing it is possible to get usable images in a range of challenging conditions, it is essential the scene illumination and reflectance is understood to achieve the best possible results.

The display monitors need to be selected to best display the received images. The size and position needs to be selected to enable the operator to use the system both safely and comfortably.

Finally the recorded evidence needs to be established in terms of image rate, quality of compression, resolution and duration. How is the data to be exported, should it be required in a criminal case?

A NOTE FROM ME

The article below "DEFINING PSIM" posted on the 16th Feb was collated to try and cut through all of the "buzz" around PSIM. It seems that there are many companies out there that claim to be a "PSIM" provider. The problem I had was getting to the bottom of what PSIM actually means and how it can benefit an organisation. The term PSIM is attributed to Steve Hunt but Frost & Sullivan have done a good job of categorising three tiers of PSIM companies. In my own opinion only the top tier should be considered as PSIM because they integrate and analyse data from disparate systems to identify and categorise security events.. The other companies that claim to be PSIM tend not to be as flexible as the Tier one products because they have been developed specifically to support a core product such as CCTV video codecs or a perimeter detection system. These systems do integrate with other security systems but are very limited on the range and capability of drivers available.

The PSIM market is evolving very rapidly and various forums are discussing the capabilities and next evolution of the concept. Join me on LinkedIn for one of these groups, or if you have a comment please let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you.

WHAT IS PSIM

PSIM as a concept emerged because end user managers of security environments cried out for better management of their security information. They wanted to be able to do with security data what every other business unit does with the data from their respective business units – that is, to make intelligent business decisions.

PSIM is a better, more flexible and much more useful way of managing security events and the information needed to respond to incidents than traditional command centre solutions.

PSIM is simply the security version of the larger, more important business tool of Information Management.

THE CHALLENGE

Currently, improvisational, fragmented and off-the-cuff security management is the norm. It's common to find security operations and traditional command-and-control centres using paper-based processes and not sharing information. Business units and IT departments rarely have access to data in corporate security departments. Events are managed separately.

Access-control-related events are monitored and managed separately from intrusion detection systems, and separate also from environmental sensors and other alerting systems. Often the people and systems are not even located in the same facility, inhibiting information sharing and correlation.

THE CONSIDERATIONS

Converged security and IT networks need to be managed to mitigate any risk of negative impact through the flood of data induced by an IP CCTV system.

Ensuring interoperability across different vendors' devices/systems is a challenge. The physical security market as a whole lacks common, open standards. Thus, virtually, any deployment requires the development of new drivers to integrate various systems.

Choosing the right system. The capability to intelligently analyse and cross-reference incoming data represents a further challenge, most PSIM systems, still process individual alarms.

THE BENEFITS

PSIM principles may be used to produce better situational awareness, prompting better security and business decisions. Situation management software creates useful information out of raw video by contextualizing it (unifying video, alarm and sensor data) which improves situational awareness and makes incident responses more efficient.

Data management best practices are more pervasive now. Regulatory compliance and management best practices dictate that computer systems and data be handled in standardized ways. Security departments are, in general, not compliant with these best practices.

The PSIM system will aggregate, correlate and analyse data from various sources, including alarms, environmental sensors, intrusion-detection systems and video surveillance to ….

• Present a situational view of data.
• Guide standard operating procedures by documenting efficient best practices for every situation.
• Identify trends by searching through data from current and past events to create reports.
• Audit operator behaviour by recording all responses to all alerts for later analysis.

CONCLUSION

Physical Security Information Management systems provide specific security information based on intelligent analysis of data from a range of sensors from what would traditionally be disparate systems. It enables an organisation to manage risk and ensure that standard procedures are carried out at an enterprise level.


Credit:
Steve Hunt http://www.huntbi.com
Frost & Sullivan http://www.frost.com

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