In 1998, the Cape Town Metropolitan Police in South Africa has adopted the Teleste VMX video management platform along with the CFO (analogue transmission) and MPX (video encoders) range of products to ensure the continued safety and security of the general public and employees of the city.
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa (3.5 million), and the largest in land area (larger than other South African cities), forming part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. Cape Town is the provincial capital of the Western Cape, as well as the legislative capital of South Africa, where the National Parliament and many government offices are situated.
Cape Town is Africa’s most popular destination for tourism
The City’s primary objective using Teleste’s video surveillance products was to aid law enforcement agencies in the execution of their duties, with up to 2000 incidents reported each month. Further uses are wide-ranging, from monitoring fires, protest marches, traffic, residential and business areas, general security and city maintenance. Clients include transport, traffic and emergency services.
Evolving together with the customer
The City of Cape Town announced the country’s first city centre surveillance installation over 15 years ago. The original installation was carried out using Teleste CFO Analogue Transmission equipment, which provided a reliable point to point installation and is still in use today. The network was upgraded in 2001 to a STM1 ATM network, which allowed the City to expand to a redundant ring type installation with the capacity for up to about 200 cameras. In 2009, the City of Cape Town upgraded to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network which provided additional capacity for many more cameras to be added to the system with sufficient network capacity for the foreseeable future.
Ridwan Wagiet, director of the CCTV branch of the Cape Town Metropolitan Police: “Cape Town wants to bring the entire Cape Town Metropole’s CBDs and public transport interchanges under 24-hour surveillance.”
Challenges posed by the project
There has not been a specific project timeline or scope in this open-ended contract. The long-term nature of the project has further resulted in the use of multiple sub-contractors and principal contractors over the years. Teleste is the only product that has been consistent throughout the duration of the project.
Teleste’s video surveillance products support; analogue, HD, megapixel and ONVIF cameras, this has provided the customer the ability to use multiple camera types without the need to install additional software therefore providing the operators a simple operation of all camera types.
Solution to customer's need
Notwithstanding the challenges, the grand vision was to give the city access to next generation IP video applications and flexibility, together with TV-quality audio, video and data. Two video control centres are used with access to each other’s feeds, pulled in from camera locations. If the high capacity link between the two control rooms should fail then they can operate as stand-alone centres.
Paired control room operators view and control the cameras, the centre runs 24 hours, 365 days a year. As incidents are noted by an operator, a supervisor is notified and can notify the Police Service, evidence is gathered in real time, and stored for 31 days.
Events such as the 2010 World Cup, Barack Obamas visit and the celebration of the life of Nelson Mandela have been monitored by the Teleste Video Management Platform.
Benefits achieved
The Teleste VMX video management platform provides Cape Town with a stable, resilient and flexible CCTV platform which is in use by both the Police and City control rooms. The City of Cape Town CCTV installation covers a large area of Cape Town which includes some of the main roads into and surrounding the City. Hundreds of cameras are controlled from a number of CCTV control rooms, each control room can view and control any camera on the system providing Cape Town with a redundant system.
Main and multiple back-up servers allow the system to continue functioning even in the case of a multiple server failure. Redundant NVRs (Networked Video recorders) are also in use providing back-up recording for all cameras.
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