Case Study: Titan Vision in Glasgow Museums
The Scenario
Visual Management Systems product, Titan Vision, has enabled Glasgow city council to centralise and integrate its new and existing CCTV systems. This has allowed full integration of fire, security and access control systems incorporating 17 sites, 200+ cameras and all alarm detection and control requirements.
The Client
Glasgow Museums is the UK’s largest local authority museums service, with a collection of 1.2 million objects of national and international significance valued at over £400 million. The collection is displayed, stored and worked on in 13 different buildings, many of which are themselves, of outstanding architectural significance attracting in the region of 2.6 million visitors per year.
It is for this reason that Glasgow City Council sought the knowledge and expertise of Visual Management Systems in order to implement a cost effective method of monitoring and protecting a large number of high value pieces of art and historical pieces.
The Problem
The initial problem was that the existing systems were unique to each site. This meant there were 17 museums with individually different CCTV, security and fire alarms. It was decided that centralisation of the monitoring would be the appropriate solution. To achieve this in the traditional manner it would have been necessary to hard wire each individual camera from site to the control room at Blochairn. This would have incurred massive costs as the 17 sites are up to ten miles away from the control room.
Each system was unique to the site. This meant wasted time and frustration by operators changing between the various systems.
The Solution
The solution involved a total revamp of the existing systems.
New cameras were added to existing stock allowing improved coverage of all sites. Titan Vision was also integrated with the fire security and access control systems effectively providing semi automation of the CCTV systems, highlighting the power and flexibility of Titan Vision.
The scale of this project’s solution lends itself to lower running costs due to the amount of shared resources that is to say, due to the large amount of equipment needed, costs are lower per unit.
Another cost saving to be made is the fact that the sites can be operated remotely from Blochairn improving the response times to alarms as the operators at Blochairn can inform staff at site as to where the problem is and how it is best resolved.
When an alarm is received from a site it will automatically be displayed on one of the three Titan control PC’s along with live video from the site. If a second alarm is generated from another site it will be routed to another of the control PC’s and so on. This enables the operator(s) to control 3 sites simultaneously.
Each site also incorporates an Ultrak system to switch any desired input (including a multiplexed image of cameras) to any one of four video bridges, allowing complete observation and control from Blochairn.
Titan Vision is now operational and being used in 17 sites with great effect.
Operators are using Titan Vision to monitor sites, control door access, receive alarms and have complete control of the CCTV, electronic security and fire monitoring systems.
The Benefits
• Centralised viewing of all 17 sites.
• The full integration and control of Fire, Security, Door access.
• Video footage archived locally and accessible over the IP (Internet Protocol) network.
• Less labour intensive.
• Instant alarm response
• Visual verification of all security activity
• Ease of scalability
• Voice over IP
Why Titan Vision?
Visual Management systems have invaluable experience in the CCTV market and can offer a cost effective CCTV solution.
Titan Vision represents a reliable solution for the integration and control of multiple site CCTV control. This included new CCTV cameras, fire alarms, intruder alarms and door access systems giving Glasgow city council complete control of CCTV and integration of alarms at the museums and sports centres around the city.