Wireless to the Rescue
Campus environment well-served by wireless video surveillance; offers opportunities for business beyond security
- By Ksenia Coffman
- Aug 01, 2011
When you imagine a traditional university or school campus, sprawling buildings and expansive lawns come to mind. Schools often showcase their well-manicured grounds on promotional brochures and websites as they woo prospective students.
But even the most serene campuses are not immune to crime—vandalism, burglaries, robberies and sexual assault. In their normal course of business, campus police have to contend with round-the-clock activity—what student has not crammed for finals into the wee hours of the morning—monitoring remote parking lots and extensive vehicular and foot traffic.
Securing large areas with limited resources often proves challenging. But many technological advances—IP-based wireless technology for video transmission, video analytics, new capabilities for video management systems and affordable storage—make “CSIlike” approaches to security possible.
Wireless Solves Campus Connectivity Challenges
Wireless is especially beneficial in campuses’ wide-open areas, where it’s impossible, cost-prohibitive or impractical to lay cable. Campuses never sleep, and even during summer vacations they are busy with summer school, cultural events or extension classes. Closing down streets for major construction would be disruptive, not to mention unsightly. Wireless systems, such as the one California State University at Long Beach has had since 2007, allow universities to bypass these disruptions.
“Installing our security system using wireless made it affordable,” said Stan Skipworth, chief of police at the university. “The expense and disruption that cabling would have caused was just not practical. With wireless, it is easy to set up new surveillance locations and to relocate cameras when necessary.”
Wireless infrastructure mesh has emerged as a de-facto standard for transmitting real-time video to police dispatch centers. It provides redundancy as a failsafe mechanism, multi-hop capability to avoid obstructions, and wire-like security and performance for latency-sensitive video streams. Many public safety systems, including those for school and campus security, also can benefit from licensed 4.9 GHz spectrum available exclusively for use by public safety agencies.
The bandwidth and flexibility of wireless infrastructure mesh enable it to be the foundation of a true all-wireless campus, not only supporting video surveillance but also serving as backhaul for other IP-based systems, such as access control, mass notification, emergency call stations and campuswide Wi-Fi. This also presents new opportunities to security integrators, who can now compete head-to-head with IT integrators for the rest of the campus’s communications needs.
Wireless Video System Helps Solve a String of Robberies on a Campus
Any campus is part of the surrounding community and thus is not immune to crime. In Bethlehem, Pa., the city’s police department is working closely with Lehigh University to ensure safety on the campus as well as in public areas in the city. Case in point: In December 2010, the Lehigh camera system provided key evidence in a string of armed robberies near the university.
In the early morning hours, a Lehigh student was robbed near the campus. The student suffered facial injuries but managed to call police. A dispatch operator who received the call helped officers move in on the suspects.
“He took the initiative to jump on our camera system and start looking in the areas where he thought our suspects would be,” said Commissioner Stuart Bedics of the Bethlehem Police Department. “It was a huge break in this case.”
The search caught four individuals, ages 13 to 18, running away from the crime scene. The dispatch operator even zoomed in as officers knocked on the door of a home where the teens were holed up. The two older suspects were arrested and charged with six counts of robbery.
The federation feature of the IP-based VMS links the city and university systems, allowing both agencies remote access to each other’s systems. The combination of wireless video, mobile streaming to command vehicles, federation to another agency and video analytics in this project is cutting-edge. It shows that even with today’s limited budgets, universities can afford an advanced IP-based system when wireless technology eliminates the expense and inconveniences of running fixed cable to camera locations.
Campus Security and Municipal Public Safety Working Together
Security integrators may benefit from the growing focus on school security, because both federal and local funds are allocated to projects. Let’s Think Wireless (LTW), a wireless and security integrator with a focus in the Northeast, established longterm relationships with many municipalities, such as in the Bethlehem deployment described above. The company is now leveraging its success in wireless video in the education space. One of its projects began as a wireless video surveillance system to secure Easton, Pa.’s West Ward area, including its schools and parks.
Two years ago, the Easton Police Department obtained a Department of Justice “Secure Our Schools” federal grant matched by city funds to improve security around an elementary school, just a block away from the site of a 2007 gang-related triple homicide in the city’s West Ward. To do so, the EPD commissioned LTW to deploy a Firetide-based wireless video surveillance network.
There are three monitoring stations. Two are in police headquarters where volunteers and police officers may be assigned to monitor special events or view, in advance of arriving on the scene, sites of criminal activities or other incidents. The video, stored for 30 days, may also be used for evidence. The third station is at the West Ward School where school district police and volunteers view the cameras at random intervals or for monitoring large crowds at school sporting or other special events. In the short time since the deployment, burglaries have been solved, school vandals apprehended, stolen cars found, and car thieves identified.
“We have done a lot of planning together with the school district, Wilson Borough, the Northampton County and Lafayette College to pool our collective resources to implement the best possible solution that will meet all of our needs,” said Easton Police Chief Larry Palmer, who has championed the wireless video surveillance system from the start. “We realized early on that it is much more cost-effective and mutually beneficial for us to own, operate and share our wireless video surveillance systems and expand them according to the security needs of our communities.”
Strategically Positioned Cameras Protect a Campus
The administration and on-campus police department at California State University in Long Beach needed a surveillance system to supplement officers on patrol, and it couldn’t temporarily shut down to lay fixed cable.
“We would have been trenching all over the place, which is horribly disruptive and just wouldn’t fly,” said Greg Pascal, communications and information systems manager for the university’s police department. “We had no other option but wireless. It would have been phenomenally expensive to go with a hard-wired solution to get the coverage we needed.”
In addition to the task of protecting a population of 38,000 mostly commuter students, the police department patrols many large and remote parking lots.
“We’re in close proximity to a couple of major freeways, so these spaces can play host to folks who aren’t part of our university community,” Pascal said.
Before selecting Firetide, the school’s police department turned to neighboring law enforcement agencies, including the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the Santa Monica Police Department, for guidance.
“Our extensive due diligence really paid off. We knew that the wireless technology used in this system would be essential to its success,” Pascal said. “Choppy or granular video caused by limited bandwidth can be a critical flaw when it comes to surveillance. We were able to avoid any of these issues from day one.”
Some 37 PTZ cameras, 29 of which are connected wirelessly, and 40 Firetide mesh nodes comprise the university’s network, deployed by local installer Moore Electrical Contracting. The network operates in the licensed 4.9 GHz public safety band to reduce interference and provide extra security. The system includes Bosch analog cameras with IndigoVision encoders and video management. The majority of cameras are strategically located on light poles and other structures around the campus and its parking lots. Those entering areas under surveillance are alerted via signs.
Trained police dispatchers monitor the live video feeds and communicate with police officers on patrol in real time. Pascal said a benefit of the cameras is that dispatch can be on the scene in a matter of seconds after a call, providing police with critical information before they arrive. This affords the officers peace of mind, and officers often ask dispatch to watch over them if a camera is in view, even for routine stops.
Nabbing Offenders, from Sexual Assault Suspect to Bicycle Thieves
In 2009, cameras were used to identify and catch an attacker after a sexual assault had occurred on the Long Beach campus. The 61-year-old female victim was on her way to class when she was followed into a restroom by the assailant. The victim was physically unharmed and university police were able to catch the man with the help of witnesses and dispatchers watching the video cameras, tracking him all the way to a bus stop.
In 2010, the campus’ surveillance system helped stop bike thefts. As reported in a local paper, a university police dispatcher observed two men acting suspiciously near a bike rack outside the residence halls late at night. Due to recent bicycle thefts, officers were immediately sent to the scene. Officers quickly arrived and detained the two suspects. Shortly after, the officers found inside the trash can near where one of the suspects was sitting a bolt cutter commonly used to break a lock or chain to steal a bike.
“Later, through our surveillance system, we viewed the camera footage and saw one of the suspects use his left hand to place an object into the trash bin next to them when the first of our officers arrived at the scene,” Skipworth said. “Both suspects admitted to coming on campus to steal bicycles, and both were arrested for possession of burglary tools, and (were given) an added charge of conspiracy to commit grand theft.”
Wireless Goes Beyond Security on the Campus
Deploying a secure, reliable and highperforming wireless backhaul for video surveillance can open additional project opportunities for security consultants and installers. Benham Protective Services, a security integrator in Florida, can attest to that. The integrator was recently approached by a school system to deploy a wireless network that would support video surveillance and provide indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi access to students and staff. But it’s not just any old Wi-Fi: The school is running a pilot program for 500 incoming students who each will receive an iPad.
The school wanted to guarantee the maximum safety and security for the students while minimally interfering with their daily activities and learning environment.
“Rather than digging up the entire campus in order to run fiber cables to a monitoring center, we proposed Firetide infrastructure mesh to connect the cameras,” said Ken Rush, CEO of Benham Protective Services. “Such an extensive security infrastructure would have been intrusive and costly to any school, but with the use of wireless, we can minimize disruptions, save time and reduce costs for the customer.”
Video in Hand—for Learning and Safety
Following the iPad pilot, the school is anticipating an eventual expansion of the program to all of its 2,000 students, so a wireless network capable of handling the bandwidth necessary to support all users is a major requirement. This is where infrastructure mesh networks coupled with Wi-Fi access come into play, to support video applications for both education and security. For example, at drop-off and pick-up points at the school, staff members can use their iPads to access the live video streams from the security cameras via access points to help direct and regulate the school’s traffic flow.
“We specialize in designing security and safety programs for municipal, commercial and campus environments,” Rush said. “Benham has been doing business since 1968. We installed systems on 130 cruise lines, La Guardia, JFK, Hartsfield- Jackson Atlanta International and Miami airports, 20,000 commercial buildings and more than 350 schools. Risk assessment, evaluation of the environment, developing procedures and protocols all go into determining the technical solution.
“With Firetide’s track record in mission- critical public safety applications, proposing a single-vendor solution for the entire project in this case was a nobrainer,” Rush said. “Combination of infrastructure mesh and Wi-Fi has changed the way a campuswide system can be built, and I’m excited about the opportunity to put security tools in the hands of all users, not just security personnel.”
Are wireless capabilities the answer for security integrators who want to get in on the IT business on campuses? Only time will tell, but once you master video over wireless, adding any other applications will be a piece of cake—so grab your share.
This article originally appeared in the August 2011 issue of Network-Centric Security.