Portsmouth City Council

Portsmouth City Council move to network-based surveillance with a future-proof Milestone IP platform solution from TM Security.

“We are slowly migrating to broadband & IP technology, modifying our network infrastructure to integrate and consolidate all the disparate services we currently have.  Milestone is the platform for us to do that. It means we can use a common front end to get the quality viewpoint.  The criteria I set down is that the system has to be infinitely expandable and it has to 'talk' to anything.  Milestone is one of the few that actually do that.” – Ray Stead, CCTV Manager for Portsmouth City Council

The Challenge: Wide geographical coverage with diverse population activities day and night and seasonal shifts with students and tourists make huge demands on this city's security surveillance. One of the first council CCTV systems from over a decade ago was built up using now-ageing technology.

The Solution: TM Security is implementing a phased solution with Milestone XProtect Corporate as the platform – open architecture video management software that allows a best-of-breed mix of surveillance cameras, integrations with other systems and endless scalability.  ACTi video encoders digitise the analogue camera streams for recording in the Milestone 24/7.  TM’s IT experts have designed & custom-built special servers which optimise the high technical demands for large volume live and archived video, while meeting the council’s strict budget considerations.

The Advantages: The open platform of Milestone IP video management software is scalable for the best long-term flexibility, allowing the city council to integrate all their disparate systems into one cohesive solution with central, local and remote access relevant to each authority.  It also provides the widest choice in hardware used and integrations with intelligent solutions like analytics. TM Security’s expertise ensures the most effective system performance at the right cost.

Security demands from a diverse and transient population

The total population of Portsmouth is about 350,000 - the same size as a London borough but classified as one of the most densely populated cities outside London, per square mile.

Portsmouth is a university city with a population that is increasing – currently about 20,000 per year.  That’s a constantly changing population throughout the year and a new shift annually of about 6,000 new ones in and out.  The expectation is to be up to about 26,000 in 3-4 years - that's quite a big shift.  In addition, there are many private schools and secondary schools – about 85. The council also manages 80 housing sites.

The city is still a naval port with big ships in for repairs and maintenance from the navy.  It is also  a port for cross-channel goods and passengers, including the Isle of Wight ferry.  The historic ships in the harbour bring in lots of tourists, as well as the historical buildings, the new quayside area and Spinnaker Tower, the pier and 4 miles of seafront.  All of this is under the vigilant watch of the City Council’s CCTV team.

During summer the students go home and the tourists pour in.  There is naturally a big night-time economy and day-time, as well, with seven shopping centres around the city that are like villages in their own right and two major ones within the city.

1,500 surveillance cameras in total

Ray Stead is the CCTV Manager for the City Council and has been involved with the design of the CCTV system in Portsmouth since 1991.  They went out to tender in 1995 and actually went live in April ‘96.

“The difference in Portsmouth is that we were not set up with a government grant so our remit was very different to other authorities around the country. We were self-funded for the first phase.  We set up the revenue budgets, the maintenance streams and all operational guidelines to keep the whole thing going, including the relationships with the police in advance of going live.” he relates.

“The Portsmouth City Council is a unitary authority within the UK which means they have their own financial clout and are not beholden to any shire county.  They have their own money from central government and can make their own decisions politically, within reason, for determining our own future,” says Stead.
 
In total his department looks after almost 1,500 surveillance cameras. Over 160 of these are public space coverage, streaming in to the central command centre via fibre optics from BT; the other cameras are at the various housing sites which they dial into via ISDN and ADSL lines utilising DVRs on site.  

“We are slowly migrating to broadband & IP technology and are therefore in the council looking into modifying our network infrastructure to integrate all our services together and consolidate all the disparate network services we currently have.  We hope to then have all the 80 housing sites onto our own VPN,” explains Stead. “It's a long term goal and when we started looking at this system the open platform technology was not available at the right price.  Once we’ve gone totally network-based we can look forward to far faster data transmission rates and more efficient image transfer of the video."

“Milestone is the platform for us to do that. Milestone was chosen because we want to achieve the elements of networking and producing information both coming in and going out from a variety of different places and systems in a widespread area. It means we can use a common frontend.  It’s a big advantage for us, and the central local and remote access is very flexible," he adds.

Another phase they are looking at is bringing all of the schools onto the systems – in an integrated way with their security, cameras, building management systems, etc.

“Again, the Milestone platform works for allowing us to link in to any type of system - intruder alarm panels, the Galaxy access system or BMS.  With one flexible information interface and the network infrastructure, we can get all that connected,” he concludes.

Stead makes it clear that he must have a business continuity plan for the city and that a modular approach is more flexible when engineering the design of a control room yet they want a common platform to minimize training issues and facilitate access to the archived video.

Both technical and human transitions for analogue to IP

Stead relates that it is not just a technical transition, but also one of re-training the human resources to new ways of working.  The security operators’ functions with IP video software required different procedures for doing some daily work and organising the video material into relevant data files for easy access and export. Managing the information is different.

“It is all part of the learning process.  Analogue operators are used to navigating with an industry standard CCTV keyboard that is not the same as a 'qwerty' computer keyboard.  They are trained in this as part of the UK nationwide certification standards for CCTV operators and can use these like professional typists, able to call up any spot monitor view at the flash of their fingertips, so there is training needed to change these functions to those of standard IT usage that most business people are used to.  This is a real industry issue for IP-centric providers to consider and take into account,” points out Stead realistically.

Regardless, nothing is more important to a security system’s effectiveness than the human element of industry knowledge applied to the images being seen. The control room operators have come to know the kinds of locations and types of behaviour that alert them to typical incidences.  This contributes to more proactive response or even prevention.

Operators in the council’s control rooms intently monitor the citywide surveillance on spot monitors and wall screens, concurrently checking the police radio reports that can be heard in the rooms.

Safer Portsmouth Partnership – police collaboration

The ‘Safer Portsmouth Partnership’ is born out of the government's Crime and Disorder Act which empowers local authorities, police and other supporting agencies to work together to reduce crime and create a safer environment.  

“Our work with the police has improved dramatically since that initiative came along in recent years.  But before that, back in 1995, we set up the procedures and protocols on talking with the police and sharing video evidence,” recalls Stead.

TM Security also a long-term partnership

TM Security came on board with Portsmouth in 2000 to implement a school system, and the relationship has grown since then.

"We are recording the video for more than 30 days and the operators watch it live in the control rooms, streaming in at 25 frames per second 24 hours a day.  In the civic office building the system only has to record at 12 frames per second for their surveillance needs, which saves on network resources," reports Andy Rawlinson, Technical Manager at TM. “Milestone has better compression standards for archiving the video images and flexible archiving models to different network drives at variable times by choice - all of which gives better system performance.”

”Milestone is just a better quality setup – that’s why I chose it,” concludes Stead. “One of the criteria I set down was that the system I buy has to be infinitely expandable and it has to talk to anything.  Milestone is one of the few, out of less than a handful I came across, that actually does that.”