Page 38 - Security Today, April 2017

time to ensure the success of each project. I would argue that large security systems are no different. If you want to achieve success, take the engineered approach.
“I spent many hours preparing an elaborate presentation for our first meeting with the city; the one that did not result in winning their business. Nevertheless, I think that extra effort showcased some of our abilities and helped us get invited back for Sugar Land’s re- launching of their security project initiative.”
This time, rather than prepare another PowerPoint, Schrader staff decided it would be best to speak off-the-cuff. We particularly emphasized the telecommunications aspect of the project, and how it might be the key to the reliability of the security network. Sugar Land has built out a lot of telecommunications infrastructure over the last few decades, and we felt that adding to and modifying their existing systems could enable them to save money over the long term. A security system cannot function without reliable communications backhaul; so any network devices owned by the city would need to be designed in great detail.”
Sugar Land’s IT department certainly understood the importance of telecommunications, and from there the meeting shifted from a security system conversation to one more concerned with infrastruc- ture, power, concept of operations, policies, procedures, and so many other important topics. A security system of this scale is about more than just cameras or access control devices.
Rapid Evolution
Technology evolves so rapidly that it can be difficult to keep up. Some products are almost obsolete by the time they get installed. It is im- portant to re-evaluate everything for every designed project, because companies are always creating some new product that drives us for- ward. At the same time, we want to ensure that a product will live up to expectations when deployed in the field. In the past there have been too many faulty devices not weren’t quite ready and too many control panels not quite finished with care. A single flaw in a component of a system can gradually erode everything else, and, before you know it, the whole thing just falls apart.
Devices may not be properly maintained, or were never designed with the proper concept of operations in mind. Nevertheless, a lot of equipment can go to waste, and it is the responsibility of the design engineer to ensure that the client doesn’t just get a product, but that the client gets the right product that they will actually use. If it isn’t useful, it may become useless.
Schrader had never designed a large scale automated license plate recognition (ALPR) security system before, because there just weren’t that many large scale ALPR deployments in the world. The city knew this was a unique project, and that’s why our meeting had to be about the engineered approach we take at Shrader Engineering. It was about communications, infrastructure and due diligence.
A few weeks later, Schrader heard that they had won the opportu- nity to design the Sugar Land ALPR security system.
Now it was time to actually do the work. Where would all of these specialized surveillance cameras go, major intersections or on the police vehicles? That’s where everyone else puts them in their cit- ies—granted at only a few intersections or a few vehicles. Sugar Land already had a few vehicles and a few intersections equipped with the cameras. Schrader had to do something more meaningful.
Data, Data and More Data
You might be surprised how much data is available from these camera systems. Tow truck drivers use them to find cars to impound, and they resell their ALPR data they gather as they drive around all day to “big data” companies, who in turn sell that packaged data to law enforce- ment agencies. How else could you effectively track a criminal across the United States? Meanwhile, toll roads use ALPR cameras to bill cus- tomers driving down the road. College campuses, corporate campuses
and apartment complexes use ALPR to determine parking violations. It’s no surprise me that even tech-savvy citizens can have privacy concerns with these ALPR systems. However, when you consider the far more frequent commercial use by so many other sources, the “privacy” argument begins to falter. Furthermore, when you consider that almost everyone is willingly walking around with a tracking de- vice (mobile phone) on them almost at all times, or that the younger generation is posting pictures of themselves to Facebook (which rec- ognizes your face and those of your friends with automatic facial recognition), you quickly realize that the privacy argument against
ALPR is borderline illogical.
These systems are not the red light cameras or the speeding ticket
cameras that almost everyone rallies against. These systems are sim- ply an investigative tool for police officers—a tool that helps them do their jobs to solve crimes on behalf of their citizens.
A few weeks into the design process, most of the work so far was preliminary meetings with the client and our initial research on ALPR camera products. Still, the primary question that kept coming back was: where in the city would these cameras actually be deployed, at major intersections? Every other installation always focused on the “major intersections.” Everyone was talking about getting the major intersections. After all, that is where all the traffic is, right?
The budgetary numbers and product selections were starting to come into focus, but there wasn’t a satisfactory master design con- cept, yet. The deployment could cover traffic in all four directions at most major intersections, like every other ALPR deployment. It just didn’t seem that useful. The thought kept returning to Schrader staff, “Is this concept really going to result in a useful security system for Sugar Land?”
Running out of time to provide Sugar Land with the proposed installation location, and idea came that was as obvious and simple. Secure the perimeter.
Every road? Yes, even that little one that almost nobody ever drives down. Make it so that nobody can enter Sugar Land without having their vehicle scanned.
Perimeter Security
Rather than mounting all of the cameras on existing infrastructure— much less expensive per camera—at the busiest intersections inside the city, the city would be mounting many of them on brand new poles on tiny residential roads—at some, a single vehicle might only go by once every 20 minutes.
But this way we got ALL of the vehicles. I jolted out of bed and ran the numbers. “It just might be within budget.”
The very next week, we presented the idea of the “Virtual Gate- way” to Sugar Land’s top police officers, IT personnel, and detectives, and we never looked back. The Virtual Gateway was designed, com- petitively bid, constructed, integrated, and tested. Today, the system works exceptionally well.
A few months ago we learned that the Memorial Villages, some of Houston’s most prestigious neighborhoods, were interested in a secu- rity project. They already spoke with Sugar Land, and had learned of the success of the “Virtual Gateway” concept.
At the time I’m writing this article, it has been just about a week since the Memorial Villages hosted a town hall meeting open to the public to explain their own Virtual Gateway system. The city coun- cil, special committee members, and lawyers were up stage presenting facts and ready to field any questions. We were
all admittedly nervous at what the public reaction
might be. Would there be outcries from a vocal
few against the system?
There weren’t any outcries. Instead, applause.
Mark H. Friday is a project engineer at Shrader Engineering, Inc.
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