Eye Can See for Miles and Miles
In the wake of a number of school tragedies that have shocked our nation, the threat of student violence is ever-present and serves as a grave call to action. For the Londonderry School System in New Hampshire, that call came in the form of recurring bomb threats. In fact, during the month of October 2000, bomb threats became a regular occurrence, at one point reaching seven in a 10-day period. Those threats not only cost students valuable time in class, but resulted in more than $30,000 in overtime fees from police. More importantly, however, the threats tested the fundamental belief that schools are inherently safe places for our children.
Things had to change and, with support from students, faculty and the community, the administrative board began evaluating a wide range of security systems that would enable administrators and authorities to watch over selected areas of the school where students were leaving bomb threats as written notes and as graffiti on walls. After researching a number of security systems, administrators chose to implement the WebEyeAlert security solution, a software solution that provides live video monitoring, image storage and motion detection/event notification capabilities, and is composed of camera control software and digital video recorder (DVR) software or DVR Plus.
The camera control software captures still images or video clips of motion-detected activity. These digital files are stored on the local DVR server PC and user’s Web server account. Customizable features include event notification, video clip length, detection schedule and access to a Web account that provides remote viewing of live or archived events via a Web browser.
The (DVR) software provides long-term digital storage of continuous, alarm-triggered or motion-detected activity. DVR software provides efficient searching, notification, scheduling and exporting capabilities. In addition, WebEyeAlert’s enhanced DVR Plus software works in tandem with their Web server technology providing user access to a thumbnail index of motion-detected activity as well as live viewing, camera control and notification capabilities.
According to Chuck Zappala, director of facilities at the Londonderry School District, "We chose the system over 13 proposed security systems because of its team’s technological expertise, and because the company provided an expandable solution, ongoing support and the ability to meet our specific needs.”
The video security software enables virtually any facility, in any industry, to take advantage of massive fiber networks, local area networks, digital storage, event detection and remote live video monitoring via the Internet and Intranet.
WebEyeAlert’s founder, S.K. Ho, explains, “It was apparent that security technologies had not maintained pace with the billions of dollars the American industry had invested in Web technology and computer Infrastructure components such as LANs, servers, the World Wide Web, fiber optics, massive storage, faster transmission speed and support software. These investments opened the door for more sophisticated security systems, which have brought security up to speed with digital technologies.”
“The ability to access the school’s internal cameras from the Web allows officers, with permission, to quickly see what’s going on inside the walls of the school while sitting at their desks at the police station or in their police cruisers,” says Ho.
The company’s team worked closely with the school and a third-party camera provider to implement the new security system, which was fully functional on Aug. 17, 2001 — about one month after they had been awarded the contract.“The system’s open architecture enabled an easy integration with our CCTV system,” says Zappala. “Their team of experts had us up and running quickly, and the software has been running flawlessly since its installation.”
The system allows administrators and authorities to simultaneously monitor their 48 cameras and view both live streaming video and archived video clips of student activity from any internet-accessible PC via a secure Web-based account. The system can be configured to notify a user by cell phone, pager, email or fax should motion be detected. This unique feature serves as a virtual security guard that watches the facility in off hours and notifies the authorities and administrators of any intrusion.
“We have had great success with the software and have already eliminated internal school vandalism, bomb threats and reduced the number of false alarms,” says Zappala. “Moving forward, we plan to expand our use of this technology to accompany additional areas of the school.”
For further information, call WebEyeAlert at 978/367-3527 or visit .