Finnish Rail Chooses IndigoVision for Pilot IP-CCTV Project

The Finnish Transport Agency for Rail, Maritime and Road Administration, has announced that the pilot project for evaluating an advanced IP-based surveillance system for 11 train stations, was awarded to IndigoVision’s Authorised Finnish Partner, Taitotekniikka (Kauppahuone Taito Oy).

The pilot project, which will start this spring, will cover some 12 sites, of which 11 are rail stations. The Central Station in Helsinki is already using IndigoVision’s end-to-end IP Video security solution for its station-wide surveillance. The station’s existing CCTV control room will also monitor the 12 sites of the pilot project, through more than 250 new IP cameras. In addition 2 new surveillance centres will be connected to the IP network, creating a distributed and redundant remote monitoring capability for the Central Station and the pilot sites. The pilot project will be rolled out during the summer of 2010.

The Finnish Transport Agency intends to build one of the world’s most advanced distributed IP-CCTV systems for rail surveillance, where the final goal is to have a nationwide system covering all stations with a network expected to monitor some 5,000 IP cameras in total. The plan is to record video 24/7 from all cameras on to distributed Network Video Recorders (NVRs), fully managed by remote surveillance centres.

IndigoVision’s class-leading H.264 compression technology allows high-quality video to be transmitted across long distances with minimum bandwidth and latency. This was regarded as vital for designing the new pilot system. Special software such as Bandwidth Manager and a server-less decentralised configuration of the planned network of 5,000 IP endpoints, will also be key features in building a reliable distributed IP-CCTV system with no single point of failure. The solution will use IndigoVision’s advanced features for creating a resilient, fault-tolerant system, allowing the end user to take advantage of redundant networks, redundant power supplies and redundant distributed NVRs.

All cameras on the network will record on a 24/7 basis, using a mixture of IndigoVision’s dedicated standalone Linux-based NVRs and PC’s running Windows-based NVR software. According to Taitotekniikka, the number of operators able to see live and recorded video from all of the cameras can be several hundred. The operators will use PC workstations running ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Security Management Software.

The pilot system is designed to handle both Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) cameras side by side, enabling H.264 and MPEG4-based equipment to coexist on the same network. Future releases of ‘Control Center’ software will also allow ONVIF-compliant IP cameras to be used at any point on the network.