The Networker: CCTV – a question of quality over quantity?

At IFSEC International there’s always a buzz around new product launches. This year proved no exception to that rule, particularly at a time when money’s tight and we can introduce new technology to potentially replace older cameras while keeping camera counts to a minimum. That’s good news for the end user!

Hang on a minute, though… Did I say keeping camera counts to a minimum?

A couple of times this year that statement led to me quizzically being asked: ‘…but you’re a vendor – don’t you just want to sell more and more cameras?’

This statement initially shocked me, but then confirmed something that we’ve been hearing about for a number of years in the UK – that we have a reputation for installing millions of cameras all over the country and all the vendors are doing is simply adding to that volume as we develop and launch new products.

How many cameras are actually working properly?

You might ask: ‘Is this a problem?’ Well, although the threat of terrorism and the riots last year have perhaps made CCTV slightly more acceptable to Joe Public, the UK is still seen as a ‘Surveillance State‘ and estimates of up to four million CCTV cameras on our streets and in our places of work have been made in the recent past.

We might have a high CCTV camera count but, in reality, how many of them actually work or are being used effectively? Should some be updated and improved, and could we even live without a few of them? A question of quality over quantity, perhaps?

A recent article on www.info4security.com, written by Rob Ratcliff, illustrates this perfectly. In the feature, Rob tells us about a study conducted by CheckMySystems which reported that 75% of UK remote CCTV installations checked had one or more issues that would impact on their operational performance.

In a market of four million cameras (if that’s the real count), then this is an awfully high number of ‘useless’ installations.

The managing director at CheckMySystems, Darren Rewston, is quoted as saying: “Modern CCTV systems are often seen as a ‘fit and forget’ solution.”

This is clearly worrying for us as an industry. I sometimes refer to this as the ‘gym membership’ syndrome – I pay my membership every month so why don’t I lose weight and become fitter? Do I really have to go there as well?

Refurbishment with no movement

A personal experience further cements the findings above. A couple of years ago I was asked by the head of loss prevention from a well-known retailer to visit its flagship store in the UK. To set the context, this retailer had signs around the store saying: ‘Sorry, we no longer stock VHS tapes’.

We squeezed into a small CCTV Control Room to look at the system used, part of which was a tiny black and white monitor sitting on a wooden desk. I asked the security officer: ‘How do you send your video to the police and security teams in the shopping centre?’ ‘Over there’, he said, and pointed proudly at the consumer VHS unit resting on a shelf. ‘But we’re running out of tapes now and have used most of them for around two years.’

When I asked how many incidents had been passed on for prosecution I was told: ‘None at all’. Why? The quality of the recordings was so poor and the tapes sometimes failed in the recorder.

To make matters worse, when we looked at the images generated by some of the cameras around the store it was obvious those cameras hadn’t moved since the refurbishment a year earlier. There were some great images of a white wall with no merchandise displayed being recorded and monitored, pointlessly, throughout the day.

Acting on the report’s findings

My point? As an industry we have developed some amazing technologies which can make lives better and safer, as well as adding true business benefit. That said, in reality how many of the estimated four million cameras are actually used to their maximum effect or are capable of the type of functionality we come to expect today (eg basic analytics, HD images, reliable digital storage, etc)?

In fact, how many of them are even used at all, and how many could we simply dispose of when they reach their end of life?

Very well done to CheckMySystems for releasing its report, but what are we going to do about its findings?

Phil Doyle is regional director for northern Europe at Axis Communications (UK)