Situated in the heart of Birchwood, the busy suburban Shopping Centre draws 100,000 eager shoppers each week and boasts a fantastic variety of retailers. Necessarily, security for crime prevention and safeguarding members of staff and the public is always high on the agenda.
After a successful term using an analogue Panasonic security surveillance system, the Centre’s management team began its search for a system upgrade when the existing lease term expired. Although the system was reliable, Birchwood’s operations manager Claire Grundy found the old system lacking when compared with new digital systems (specifically in terms of the length of time taken to find information).
Site survey and demonstration of digital
Long-standing relationships with installer Elite Digital Systems were leveraged and a site survey conducted using a Panasonic demonstration van to demo the latest in digital CCTV equipment. The quality of the images from the digital cameras won over Birchwood Shopping Centre’s management team and the relationship with Elite continued. Elite won the tender to complete a total upgrade of the existing system.
Elite Digital Systems’ systems solutions manager Ian Duncanson specified the system for the Centre to fulfil its list of objectives. These included making sure that the Centre’s dual use as both consumer and commercial property was met, and increasing the coverage throughout the Centre and its four car parks.
Four additional PTZ dome cameras were installed over the original installation. The WV-CW960 offers a zoom of 30:1 to provide better total coverage and improved detail.
In total, Elite engineers connected eleven WV-CW960 all-weather, vandal-resistant dome cameras, five Panasonic WV-CP484 fixed cameras, six WV-CS950 Super Dynamic dome cameras, two WV-CP244 fixed cameras and one WV-CW474 internal vandal-resistant dome camera.
Digital recording offers 2.5 Tb storage
All images are digitally recorded by two WJ-RT416 real-time DVRs populated with 2.5 Terabytes of hard disk storage. This provides Grundy and her team with 14 days’ stored footage.
In addition to the new cameras, Elite Digital Systems has also kitted out a new Control Room with one Panasonic 42″ plasma and two 20″ LCD monitors. This allows 16 of the cameras with key locations to be monitored on the main screen, and 11 split across the two LCD screens.
Taking control of the cameras via a WV-CU650 system controller, any one of the ten-strong Security Team members can easily search through recordings quickly and efficiently. The main Control Room is supplemented by monitoring stations located in three of the management offices, including that of Claire Grundy. This allows the management team to view any camera at any time in case of emergencies.
Multi-faceted system use
Uses of the new system for Birchwood Shopping centre are multi-faceted. From a security perspective, the system allows the Centre’s management to aid the local police with high quality JPEG images that assist with the prosecution of criminals.
This has been proven in situations of theft from the retail stores, and also break-ins outside of normal opening hours.