Mission
Dubai International Airport, in a very short time, has grown from an airfield into an aviation hub. Today, not only is Dubai International Airport one of the fastest growing airports in the world, it is also recognised as the premier and busiest airport of the Middle East region. In 2008, the airport handled a record 37,441,440 passengers and over 34% of all flights entering and leaving the Middle East and Africa. Security at the airport needed to be urgently upgraded as a result of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) summit meeting to be held in Dubai. Given the importance of surveillance to the security of the airport the system had to be designed, installed, configured and handed over to airport security in less than a month. A technical solution designed by Controlware was selected to provide high quality video transmisison, advanced management and reliable recording for the airport.
Solution
The new solution includes management and recording for 16 dome cameras situated around the airport. The high-quality solution runs over the existing airport data network which connects the cameras to the control room. In the control room cameras are controlled by the security team who monitor live video and review recordings with advanced management software. Video (with the right permissions) can be accessed from anywhere on the network increasing surveillance flexibility and providing added resileince for the airport.
Technology
Video from the 16 analogue dome cameras is converted to IP by using video codecs that stream the video across the airport data network. By utilising MPEG-4 compression images are able to be broadcast at high quality while consuming minimal bandwidth enabling other applications and services to share the network. In the control room video is monitored in real-time at 25 FPS (Frames Per Second), 24 hours per day.
For recording Network Video Recording (NVR) technology is used. NVR technology enables the creation of high-density and scalable storage solutions. Fail-over management and redundant recording ensures that recorded video is not lost even in the event of network downtime. By using off-the-shelf PC-server and RAID storage devices price and performance is dramatically improved over conventional Digital Video Recorders (DVR). NVR provides greater scalability than traditional analogue CCTV recording systems. Since there are no capacity limitations, more storage can be added as the surveillance network evolves allowing access to live or recorded video at anytime.
Result
The advanced IP CCTV solution provides high-quality video surveillance that is flexible and resilient allowing images to be monitored from any point on the network. This demanding project was designed, configured, and completed within the airports ambitious time-frame of one month. In fact the solution was handed over to airport operators in just 22 days. Using the airport data network for video transmission enabled the solution to be installed quickly. This also proved to be highly cost-effective as no additional cabling was required. Saftey for employees, visitors and travellers has been improved thoughout the airport facility.
