Take a visitor tour of any university campus these days and, along with a discussion about dorms and dining halls, your guide will most certainly talk about the school’s commitment to security and the systems in place to keep everyone safe. Security is now “front and center” on university campuses like never before, but even so, systems must still be designed with sensitivity to budgets.
When planning for a new system or updating an older one, campus technology executives and their system integrators should be engaged in collaborative discussions about the elements that will comprise their system – both hardware and software. Each should be evaluated in terms of how it will contribute to the system’s total cost of ownership. Communication and careful planning, up front, is the best way to ensure that there are no surprises later on and that the VMS delivers on expectations for both performance and value. Following are issues worth considering.
Network Design
When designing a campus VMS system and planning its topology, the first step is to understand who will need to access video feed from all the different buildings. Will there be a central control station for managing the entire campus? Will monitoring of some properties occur locally? Typically, if each building on campus has many cameras, systems should be designed to record and store video locally, but allow for live viewing and playback remotely. This keeps the bandwidth usage across the wide area network to a minimum.
Will the system be accessible for campus and local police? Will police need to access the system from their cars or on their phones? If so, the campus will need a very powerful wireless network that can support the transmission of high-resolution video.
What’s the camera count per building, and what resolution and frame rates will be recorded? How many people will be accessing the system at once? How long will video be stored? These issues contribute to bandwidth requirements as well as system-wide storage requirements.
Sufficient investment in network infrastructure is paramount, and definitely not a place to cut corners. Fortunately, the price of network equipment has gone down in recent years, its availability has improved, and some newer technologies like 10GB Ethernet, high-speed wireless mesh and point-to-point wireless can help reduce installation costs.
Cameras
Campus surveillance systems usually have a very high camera count, and the price of cameras, plus licensing fees, plus installation costs, quickly add up.
When considering indoor cameras, finding one that provides the right field-of-view is the first step, and then additional capabilities can be evaluated. For example, a camera with a varifocal lens costs more than the same camera with a fixed lens. If an application won’t require refocusing of a camera once it’s installed, a less expensive fixed lens may suffice. Also, don’t pay for higher resolution than is necessary. As a general rule, the smaller the space to be covered, and the closer and narrower the camera’s field-of-view, the lower resolution that’s required. A 2MP camera isn’t necessary to cover a doorway 10 feet away.
With outdoor cameras, there are more challenges, due to lighting conditions and bigger spaces. On campuses, higher resolution fixed cameras are being used frequently in place of PTZ cameras because of their wider field-of-view, and their higher pixel density that allows for effective digital zoom. However, the trade-off from higher pixel density can be poor low-light performance, so the expense of adding lights or IR beams must be calculated as part of the overall system cost.
New high-resolution hemispheric cameras, with fisheye lenses, are becoming increasingly popular as a way to reduce camera count. These cameras can often replace the use of several fixed cameras, and also do a good job of simulating a PTZ experience, as long as they aren’t expected to provide very high magnification when zooming. Using these cameras to cover large areas, like parking lots, dining halls and auditoriums, in place of a much higher number of traditionally fixed cameras, makes sense financially and can even result in better coverage.
Finally, new H.265 cameras offer superior compression, meaning that less bandwidth is required to support transmission, and video files are smaller and require less storage. As bandwidth and storage are both expensive, H.265 cameras can clearly contribute to a lower total cost of system ownership.
Storage
With so many cameras on a university campus, storage costs are a major consideration. The trick to reducing the cost of storage is to reduce the need for it. In addition to using H.265 cameras, customers should be looking for cameras that support “smart” encoding, meaning they can automatically adjust the way they process and record video based on activity and bandwidth factors. When not much is happening in the camera’s field-of-view, file size is kept to a minimum, but when the camera detects activity, it increases the video quality to provide more detail. Video management software can also be used to create schedules that record higher resolutions and frame rates during high traffic periods but revert to lower settings to save on storage during non-peak times.
VMS Licensing Costs
Campus environments are especially vulnerable to recurring licensing fees. With hundreds, or even thousands, of cameras, the price of long-term support can quickly overtake the initial investment under some VMS plans. Customers should place a high value on VMS solutions that offer flexibility in maintenance plans and offer platforms that allow users to keep up to date, at no cost, with bug fixes and current code upgrades.
When plans are required for feature enhancements, plan structures and software tiers should be clearly defined so that there are no surprises for customers down the road. Customers will not be pleased to find out that they must invest in a full system tier upgrade to add a capability that they thought was included in their plan, such as system expansion.
Dave Lawes, Account Manager with system integrator System Tech in Boise, Idaho, has several customers with campus-wide installations and confirms this sentiment. “Licensing is always a big deal,” he says, “so if there’s a way to minimize the cost and complexity of licensing, that makes a difference.”
Legacy Product Support
Analog cameras are still a significant component of the security market and can be used in many areas where high-megapixel cameras are not necessary. By using encoders, analog cameras offer a much lower cost-per-channel. The greatest savings can be had by finding a VMS that charges for a single device license when connecting to a multichannel encoder.
Dave Lawes agrees. He says that when helping his university customers transition to IP, keeping lots of legacy equipment in use is an important way that he helps to stretch their dollars. “They may have hundreds of cameras in place, so trying to move forward with that is part of our mission.”
Thin Client Software
In a campus environment, the accessibility of video streams, live and playback, needs to be flexible. So does administrative control. As different people need to access the video system, it is imperative that this can happen quickly and with minimal IT involvement. Thin client topology is the best way to make this happen.
An added benefit is that thin client solutions are cost effective. There are no up-front or long-term costs, like those associated with thick client software. There’s also never a need to re-license or reinstall software if new computers are introduced.
Encrypted Communication
Universities spend significant dollars and time to secure their networks from attack. That’s because the cost of remediating an attack can be incredibly expensive. Physical security platforms are often points of cyber vulnerability. To minimize the opportunity for attack, any VMS that runs on the network should comply with current network security protocols and offer tools for those who want to take it a step further. Thin client, web-based VMS systems should allow for secure browsing, much like browsing a bank account, as an additional layer of protection between the VMS components and other traffic on the network.
Open Architecture
An ability to support industry accepted interoperability standards is a must-have for any campus-wide VMS system. Look for a VMS that has adopted ONVIF as a complete standard for the system and uses it as its leading protocol. This will ensure the broadest choice of fully compatible cameras and devices to choose from, making it easier to look for cost-effective models.
Health Monitoring
A significant burden for the operational or IT managers of large, distributed systems is the challenge of maintenance. When components fail, downtime can be expensive, both in replacement equipment and labor. A VMS system that offers a powerful health monitoring dashboard can make it easier for those responsible to immediately identify problem devices and network issues. This results in less time spent troubleshooting and, in some cases, allows for proactive measures that preclude more expensive problems from occurring.
Ease of Use
As powerful as today’s VMS systems can be, users are often frustrated trying to master their capabilities and make full use of their features. The speed and ease with which the system can be deployed, how efficiently administrators can manage and make changes to the system, whether the system operators understand how to make use of its many features, and how easily technicians can identify and correct problems when they occur – these are all considerations. And, as time is money, the simpler the system is to use by its different stake holders, the lower the total cost of ownership will be.
Summary
University campuses, by definition, pose complex challenges for VMS system design. Large numbers of buildings spread across sprawling properties, huge camera counts, bustling activity often around the clock, and multiple monitoring authorities, including campus and local police, all need to be accommodated in system design. Even so, there are many ways in which total cost of ownership can be brought down without making any compromises in the system’s ability to be effective. It’s really just a matter of knowing all the right places to look.
About the Author: Bret McGowan has been Vicon’s Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for the Americas since June 2012, and has served in a number of roles since joining the company in 1993.
