Dacorum Borough invests in major surveillance upgrade
With approximately 150,000 residents and a growing number of businesses, Dacorum Borough Council invested in Omnicast™, the IP video surveillance system of Security Center to improve incident response and better service for residents and businesses.
The company
The Borough of Dacorum, a district in the southern county of Hertfordshire in England, counts approximately 150,000 residents and a growing number of businesses. To enhance its services, Dacorum Borough Council invested in a new district-wide wireless network and began plans to upgrade of its security operations and technologies.
The challenge
Previously, they were working with old analogue systems that were very limiting, and ran separately on different computers. The goal was to put in a new and modern system that had the flexibility to easily integrate new technologies, and that would give the team one easy solution to access and manage everything.
The solution
Expanded surveillance reach
The control room team monitors cameras from independent entities such as a senior’s residence, homeless shelter, recycling depot, and more—all from the unified platform.
Strengthened ties with police
The borough team can provide police with exported video and digital logs on a single disk within minutes. This efficiency has led to a 40% increase in requests for footage by the police.
Improved borough services
Merchant parking has been simplified with an AutoVu ALPR system which provides automated gate access control. Access is granted or denied based on a council-managed whitelist.
Flexible platform for growth
The borough can add more coverage, address staff vulnerabilities, control parking, add perimeter alarms or access control in the future through this one robust platform.
“Being able to unify all systems in one solution has been a massive advantage for our team. With Security Center, other departments can rely on us to manage their systems.”
Jim Guiton, CCTV Manager, Dacorum Borough Council
Results
The Omnicast IP video surveillance system was first implemented to manage over 170 cameras borough-wide. While half of the cameras are council-owned and spread throughout the towns and villages, the control room team monitors cameras from other independent entities such as a senior’s residence, recycling depot, caravan carpark, retailers and more—all from the unified platform.
Dacorum Borough Council added more technological ingenuity to the district using AutoVu™, the automatic number plate recognition (ALPR) system of Security Center for automated gate access control. Licensed merchants can now freely drive into restricted parking areas to easily setup and dismantle booths in a town’s center. Unifying all systems in one solution allows operators to efficiently respond to an incident.