The Cumberland Basin is the main entrance to Bristol’s docks and also a route into the city centre.
The two SCP-3430H pan tilt zoom speed dome cameras have been mounted on the top of one of Bristol’s landmark buildings, Tobacco Bond B.
“During the rush hour the number of vehicles passing through can be extremely high and in order to ensure that traffic flows smoothly, operators in the city’s traffic control centre are tasked to keep a close eye out for any incidents or parking violations which might lead to traffic jams”, Samsung said.
Built in 1908, Tobacco Bond B is the home of the Bristol Records Office.
Effectively monitoring fast moving traffic
“It was very helpful that the building is owned by Bristol City Council,” said Edward Booth Ray, managing director of Select Electrics Ltd who recommended and installed the dome cameras.
“We didn’t therefore need to worry about obtaining permission from a third party to install the dome cameras on the roof and connect them to the City’s network infrastructure via fibre run inside of the building and we were therefore able to maintain the aesthetics of the building.”
The SCP-3430H has dubbed weatherproof and has 43x optical zoom capability. Incorporating Samsung Techwin’s A1 DSP chipset, the SCP-3430H has Progressive Scan technology designed to achieve ‘very high quality video capture’ of moving objects, such as number plates of cars.
“It is quite remarkable how just two widely available dome cameras are able to achieve so much for us,” said Gordon McLanaghan, emergency control centre manager for the council.
“They are located high up on the top of the Tobacco Bond B building to provide an unrestricted field of view and it is therefore extremely impressive how good the quality of the images is, despite the fact that more often than not we are taking advantage of the cameras’ 43x zoom feature.
The cost of the project was relatively small compared to the invaluable information the cameras are providing to our control centre operators which is helping them to make quick and effective decisions when dealing with any developing incidents. The images are also available to the police should they need to monitor any suspicious criminal activity and the low light capability of the cameras means we can monitor the area 24/7.”
