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Public Facilities and Events Roundup
IP Video Management at WSU's Koch ArenaThe Latest from SIW
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The Charles Koch Arena at Wichita State University — home to the home to the Wichita State Shockers men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball teams — has more than 10,000 seats, and regularly draws full capacity crowds from both the university and the surrounding community. Campus police wanted to guard this environment pro actively, to maintain the highest levels of safety and enjoyment.
Paul W. Dotson, Chief of Police at Wichita State University , relates that the Koch Arena was identified as one of the top 20 critical infrastructures by the state and federal Homeland Security: “This university is a community-based institution, so much of our public are students, former students, and neighbors. Doing a vulnerability assessment of our campus, working together with the Department of Homeland Security, we identified that we had gaps in our safety net for such largely populated venues. The federal solution in funding was well-placed to address this.”
ISG Technology was tasked to deliver the system, which features the XProtect Enterprise IP video surveillance software from Milestone Systems to manage, schedule and control 31 network cameras from Axis Communications, in a mix of fixed and pan/tilt/zoom models. Cisco switches are used in the network fiber optic infrastructure installed during the building's renovation in 2003. Using the IT network in place, setting up the cameras was easy.
The surveillance software provides an overview of the entire facility, enabling campus officers to be proactive about safety in the busy venue. Live surveillance images are used to monitor crowd flow, check body language and send police to head off situations before they can escalate. When incidences do occur, they have the recorded video to resolve any questions or to use as evidence, also to analyze the environment for improvements.
“The networked surveillance approach saved costs by letting us use the existing IT infrastructure, and reduced some labor costs for static observation posts of officers at specific stations every hundred feet on the concourse. We then use those resources more efficiently by shifting them to deal with other conflicts or problems, making much better use of our time and dollars spent for security,” Dotson says.
Electronic Locks Protect Church Facilities in Texas
Grace Christian Center of Killeen, Texas , has deployed the CyberLock Access Control System from Videx to address physical access and key control problems. The system incorporates the existing mechanical lock hardware already in the church buildings, with the cylinders inside the existing mechanical locks replaced with CyberLock electronic cylinders.
“As the person in charge of security, the audit trail is one of the most important things CyberLock has provided us,” Pastor Steven Timmerman says. “It has increased accountability.”
