Under watchful eyes

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 – and 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 intervention, 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 understanding of the considerations, as well as the technical expertise in the security/surveillance field, 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 CCTV since 1996, a year ago he turned service provider,as managing director of CCTV specialist CVSS Ltd.

“Changes in border controls; increased efforts to gain a status of residence by those keen to leave their home countries; great gains to be made by those keen to profit from evading various UK taxes; crime and terrorist activities have all made the task of the port security staff an unenviable one,”he says. Since the early 1980s users have sought the development of CCTV technologies to make the task of securing such vulnerable areas more sophisticated.

The ability of one person manning a control room to scan for the presence of “unwarranted incursions”saw a great reliance on the need for CCTV operators becoming an integral part of an efficient security system, he says.

However, human overload due to the number and complexity of camera views to be monitored sometimes resulted in criticism that systems had failed when, in fact, the problem was that too much was being required of too few operators. Often, successful systems relied on having so many operators monitoring them that the cost was simply not affordable.

The well-managed and monitored CCTV system has become a norm and rightly has a place in the security jigsaw, says Mr Lack, but experience with large systems shows that investigations after an incident are often thwarted because of the limited field of view or location of one camera. “Automated number plate recognition, movement detection,movement pattern recognition and analysis, and biometrics are all useful tools to present incidents to the human operator, but only if occurring within the view of the camera,” he says.

“The question many managers now ask is ‘what is needed to complement my system that is leaving the opportunists lots of places to hide?'” According to Mr Lack there are three general ways in which video surveillance operations can be implemented. First, in a well-manned operation, operators are present with full concentration on the video monitors. If pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) features are being used, operators are present to control the cameras. If an incident occurs, personnel can be dispatched immediately to handle the situation. Thus, excellent security is provided – but with a very high manpower requirement.

In a partially-manned operation, security personnel are present but do not have 100% focus on the monitors.There may be too many cameras to monitor, personnel may be called away to do patrols, or live monitoring may take place only during certain hours. “In any case, many incidents will not be noticed by the operators as they occur and are only brought to light at a later time. The recorded video is often of little use, since the camera was not positioned correctly to view the incident.”

Finally, there are unmanned operations, when the video is stored for later review. PTZ technology cannot be used, since no-one is present to reposition or zoom the cameras. “Today’s CCTV solutions are suited for well-manned operations,” says Mr Lack. “Camera resolution is not critical because personnel are present to view the monitors and take immediate action if necessary. However, if a camera is pointed away from the location where an incident occurs, when security personnel are way from their monitors, or if people are not available to dispatch, the limitations of today’s CCTV products become apparent.”

Camera resolution is critical in partially and unmanned operations, says Mr Lack. Stored video will be reviewed in an investigation and faces, small items such as licence plates and weapons, and suspicious activity must be identifiable. However, as he says, “everyone knows the problem”. An incident occurs that requires review of stored video. Security personnel bring up images of the incident and zoom into an area of interest.

Unfortunately, the image is too blurry to be of use. “Today’s CCTV solutions for video surveillance provide a resolution of 640×480 pixels per frame. This means that unless the surveillance camera is pointed in the correct direction, zoomed into an area no larger than 16×12 foot, and at the exact time the incident occurred, the stored video will be useless in terms of assisting in the resolution of a crime. There is a need for much higher resolution capabilities and Mr Lack says linescan technology may provide the answer.

First used in the UK by a London borough to help police in monitoring crowds at a football match,linescan camera technology, which uses a single line of pixels to build up images of moving objects, has been in use for many years in non-security applications – such as processing bar codes for postal sorting. Mr Lack says linescan technology adapted to video surveillance can offer 21m pixels in a single image,over 250 times the resolution of a typical CCTV camera.