Case Study – City of College Park
Delivering Results
Iron Sky surveillance solution helps city of College Park fight crime
Challenge
As home to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the world’s only convention center connected to a major airport, College Park has worked to earn its distinction as “Georgia’s Global City.” College Park also had to contend with the highest crime rate in metro Atlanta, which threatened to halt further economic development.
The College Park police department had identified areas known for prostitution and drug use, but deploying personnel to those areas 24-hours a day would be costly and impractical. College Park needed a city surveillance system that would serve as a force multiplier. Local businesses shared city officials’ vision for a safer College Park, bolstered by a system that was easy to use and capable of expanding over time.
Solution
College Park chose Iron Sky to design and deploy a video surveillance solution. The city needed a system that would deliver high-definition footage on any computer connected to the LAN/WAN. The police department wanted a simple training process so officers could quickly use the new crime-fighting tools to get the job done. Iron Sky designed a 28-camera solution that included five 35X pan/tilt/zoom dome cameras and seven high-definition fixed cameras, along with the city’s existing 16 analog cameras. The Iron Sky solution gave officers video access to key areas along Main Street, Old National Highway and Camp Creek Parkway. To provide connectivity, Iron Sky utilized wireless mesh and point-to-point radios to transmit camera images to a communications tower on top of the College Park public safety antenna, which is adjacent to the police department.
Existing cameras located throughout the College Park City Hall were fully integrated to the Iron Sky system. To cut costs, the city’s power company installed new cameras and utilized existing utility poles. Iron Sky’s video management software, designed for use by law enforcement, uses a thin-client, non-proprietary application that focuses on ease of use and intuitive navigation by using an interface developed around
Google Maps. All aspects of camera navigation, camera control, live view, recording and search are accessed from a single web page. Rather than present users with an overwhelming number of tabs, navigation trees, shortcut keys and web pages, users simply select the desired camera from its position on Google Maps and utilize all functionality without ever having to navigate away from the page.
Iron Sky believes that the one of the most important function of its VMS is to deliver images to critical personnel when and where they are needed in response to an incident. The Iron Sky VMS is a thin-client application that enables the city of College Park to grant access to the cameras to a new user, regardless of what department or agency they are with, simply by giving them an IP address, user name and password.
The key to success on the wireless portion of this project was the elimination of “hop” loss on self-healing mesh units deployed by Iron Sky. Even with the high resolution of the megapixel cameras, Iron Sky was able to
deploy wireless equipment that could flawlessly handle the large video files being transmitted — even when passing through multiple wireless radios. Each of the wireless radios is capable of 56 Mbps and utilizes three different frequency ranges (2.4GHz, 4.9 GHz and 5.8 GHz) for flexibility in design and maximum uninterrupted bandwidth.
To keep the total cost of ownership of the project to a minimum, the city used its power company to perform the physical installation of cameras and wireless equipment. Managing this project required diligent coordination by Iron Sky’s project management staff as well as the police department and the College Park Power Company.
Iron Sky has a robust delivery methodology that allowed it to manage the entire process in a very short amount of time, eliminating issues that typically arise when multiple parties are involved in a single installation.
Iron Sky began the project with a pre-construction kickoff meeting with all relevant parties to identify points of contact, assign department-specific responsibilities, agree to delivery dates and ensure that everyone understood the scope of work.
Project managers met regularly with key stakeholders from the police department, city council and local businesses to keep them apprised of the project’s progress. Iron Sky’s project management staff also gathered
information from the client necessary for the staging and configuration of the equipment and provided training and installation manuals to the relevant installation crews prior to the equipment being delivered. The high level of coordination was necessary to provide everyone with the tools to complete their specific ask on schedule and on budget.
Results
The cameras have equipped the police department with an incredibly effective tool to fight crime. Within the first 12 hours of its use, officers made three arrests in high-traffic areas monitored by Iron Sky cameras. Footage also serves as a performance management tool for the department as they work to allocate resources strategically.
“This system gives us high-definition video footage that makes it easier for officers to get the job done,” said College Park police chief Ron Fears. Georgia’s “Global City” will soon have 33 surveillance cameras currently in use, and city officials plan future expansion of the Iron Sky system to the Georgia International Convention Center and the Godby Road Recreation Center.
Officers are excited about the new technology and its ease of use, facilitated by two simple clicks of the mouse to gain detailed video footage.
CONTACT IRON SKY
Bob Carter, General Manager
678-283-4829
bcarter@IronSky.com
Download: City of College Park Case Study
