It was the first hand experience of Indigovision’s surveillance technology operating in the Mayfair Shopping Centre that helped the company to decide on its surveillance strategy for Mapleview. Santo Polito, Property Services Manager for Ivanhoe Cambridge, explains the reasons behind the decision, “Indigovision’s technology gives us a flexible and scalable platform for our surveillance needs, allowing the systems to be easily updated as shopping centres expand and develop. This in combination with the company’s excellent Partner network in Canada and the experience of seeing the technology successfully installed in the Mayfair Centre gave us the confidence to use Indigovision’s solution.”

The flexibility and scalability of the Indigovision system derives from its distributed architecture that allows cameras, video management workstations and recorders to be located at any point on the network. Mapleview exploit this capability by having workstations running ‘Control Center’, Indigovision’s Security Management Software, situated not only in the main security control room but also on two Manager’s desks. A mix of analogue fixed and PTZ cameras are connected to IndigoVision’s transmitter modules, which convert the camera feeds to DVD quality digital video for transmission over the network.

“We can add additional cameras and workstations for minimal cost, as the network is already in place. From a property management perspective this has significant benefits,” continues Polito. “Where there is no network infrastructure, such as the car park at Mapleview, we used a point-to-point wireless bridge to extend coverage. The five cameras installed here allow us to better monitor the parking areas and manage incidents.”

Indigovision’s IP Video solution can also be used to provide benefits beyond store security. The shopping centre management can access footage to help analyse events, promotions and footfall trends. Real time analytics can also be used for some innovative applications. Mapleview is currently trialling the directional virtual tripwire analytics function built into the IndigoVision video transmitter modules to provide the shopping centre with a count of customers entering two of the building’s entrances. This provides better accuracy than the traditional ‘Eye-Beam’ equipment installed on the doorways, which unfortunately double-counts people as they enter and leave the premises.

Video is recorded on IndigoVision’s latest NVR-AS 3000 ‘Green’ Network Video Recorders. Five units provide Mapleview with a minimum 30 day archive of video continuously recorded from all the cameras. The extremely low power consumption and high-performance of the NVRs help reduce the equipment footprint and running costs of the IP Video storage solution. One of the NVRs is used as a redundant backup, which automatically starts recording if another NVR fails or is taken off-line for maintenance. Evidential quality video clips can be exported from the system for police investigations in the event of an incident.