South African business owners – have you ever been let down by your video surveillance footage? Not able to identify or recognize a suspect. Not able to capture license plate details.
One of the major reasons for this failure is that the camera resolution is too low. Either the rated resolution of the camera, or the distance between the camera and the target do not provide sufficient resolution to identify suspects or characters.
Well actually the root cause is the failure to follow the relevant standards for designing and deploying video surveillance. There is an over-reliance on the DORI measure that many manufacturers publish with their specific cameras.
STANDARDS AND RESOLUTION
DORI is a standard that details at what distance a camera is capable of Detecting, Observing, Recognising or Identifying a person – NB, not characters. DORI, though has many limitations. It is for this reason that installers and video surveillance engineers need to follow a comprehensive set of standards that will account for these limitations. It is based on static targets, specific light, environmental and weather conditions, camera height, camera angle. Variation in real world scenarios – for each of these, will affect the rated DORI capability.
In setting out the actions needed, to ensure that you get the right resolution from your video surveillance system, I start here.
Don’t pressure your provider with unrealistic expectations, unrealistic budgets and under-estimating the time needed to properly design the system. You cannot just walk about the factory and point out to your provider where you want the cameras. If you dictate the mounting locations – you probably won’t get the desired result.
OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS
You need to provide your installer with Operational Requirements (OR)!
We start off by sub dividing the facility into critical areas. Critical areas may also be sub divided into sub areas.
Then we want to produce an operational requirement for each critical area. Engage the workforce, and area managers to get as much participation as possible. The people involved with the day to day operation of an area are best going to define the operational requirement.
So how do we write an operational requirement.
1. Define the bad guy – the problem. What do you need from the surveillance camera, and what problem are you trying to fix? e.g. Someone is stealing ice-creams from the fridge, you want to stop the theft of ice-creams.
2. What’s the goal? What’s the perfect outcome that you would like to achieve. e.g. I want to catch the culprit, present undeniable evidence and prevent the theft of ice-creams in the future.
3. I like to add in one criteria here. What is solving the problem, worth to you? Let’s say the theft is costing R100 per day, solving the problem is worth at least R3000 a month.
3. What are the constraints we might face – While respecting privacy regulations, not exceeding the specific budget, and considering poor lighting, suitable mounting location that provides a satisfactory angle for identification of the suspect and other limitations.
It now becomes the installers responsibility to deliver the desired outcome. To do so he will determine the resolution required, the mounting location, and Technical features of the camera that may be needed to achieve the outcome and overcome limitations.
UNDERMINING THE DESIGN
Don’t undermine the installer. If he specifies a License Plate Recognition (LPR) camera for number plate detection – don’t insist that the outcome can be achieved with some other DIY camera. No amount of wishful thinking is going to result in a standard surveillance camera detecting license plates – except under very constrained, ideal circumstances, and in some limited cases using features of a camera like HLC.
Additionally you cannot cover the entire parking lot with a single camera. Identifying vandals with the same camera. There is a rule in the industry – the wider the view the lesser the detail!
If you want to recognize or identify a target, you may need to provide one single dedicated camera to observe that target area. You also need to consider the limits of the distance between the camera and target. Perhaps you need to space two or more cameras to reduce the distance at which each camera is expected to provide identification of a target.
Installers often cave in to the customers demand. They attempt to achieve the requirements with lower spec, or lower number of cameras than are required – to satisfy the customers budget.
Regardless of how cheaply one manages to get their surveillance system installed – if it fails to achieve the Operational Requirement – it can be considered as fruitless expenditure for the customer, and creates a negative perception of the installers reputation.
If we consider the cost of the proper solution, to be too high – then the Operational Requirement has likely been over-estimated. It may not be as important as we initially imagined. Or the solution may be unaffordable?
SUMMARY
In summary – Business owners should engage a reputable provider, take the necessary time to properly draw up operational requirements, and trust the provider to come up with the technical specifications of equipment needed to achieve those requirements.
