Page 108 - Security Today, July/August 2020

An Incident Alert
Seeking more efficient and proactive video surveillance and camera management
Facility Security
UNC Greensboro Communicatins Department
University of North Caroline Greensboro (UNCG) is one of 17 campuses within the University of North Carolina system. Founded in 1891, UNCG is the largest and most diverse uni- versity in the Piedmont Triad region, serving more than 20,000 students and employing approximately 2,800 faculty members.
The university is in the heart of Greensboro, which boasts nearly 260,000 people, making it visible within the larger community as well. Landlocked by local streets, the 200-acre campus with 30 build- ings poses unique security issues as it is crisscrossed with major roads, making it a priority to ensure pedestrian and bicycle safety. As a public institution, it is also largely open to the community and hosts numerous events, activities, and services regularly accessed by resi- dents of nearby neighborhoods and the city at large.
UNCG has its own police department (UNCGPD) with more than 40 members, who ensure the safety of the campus. The police depart- ment relies on its video surveillance system to alert them to incidents, record video for forensic purposes and also provide video analytics for traffic and crowd control.
Growing Campus, Rising Needs
With a growing campus and rising security needs, UNCGPD, with the help of its integrator NETCom Cabling, located in Greensboro, N.C., recognized it required a more efficient and proactive video sur- veillance and camera management system. The days when DVRs could provide the necessary recorded data quickly gave way to the need for a more responsive approach such as a shared enterprise system to bring together cameras, recording and the intelligent usage of both.
UNCGPD’s foray beyond the NVR/DVR world began with the installation of the exacqVision platform, starting with its Z-Series
recorders to cover its parking decks. From there it began to incorpo- rate a hybrid platform, including exacqVision VMS, to support the analog cameras used for the parking decks as well as the IP cameras being installed for security elsewhere. The migration began several years ago, but today the campus boasts nearly 900 cameras in use, with about 700 IP and the remainder analog. Each recorder can han- dle up to 128 IP cameras and 64 analog units, and it works with thousands of IP camera models.
Within that time, the UNCGPD has also grown to become a state-of- the-art department with its own command and emergency operations center where it can monitor and manage its video surveillance system.
Seeking the Right System
In selecting the exacqVision Z series, UNCG’s police department was seeking an intuitive system that would put the necessary infor- mation at the fingertips of whomever was on duty. It was also critical to deploy a system with built-in redundancy to protect against any data loss in the event of a power issue or system fail.
“It’s a pretty easy end-user experience for our officers without a lot of technological background,” said Joshua Green, technical services analyst for the UNCGPD. The software within the system makes it simple to perform tasks such as playing back recordings or searching for data using a single screen.
One of the biggest benefits of the Z-Series is its scalability, offering one of the largest processors and fastest speeds of the DVRs on the market. The system’s design also makes it easy to add new cameras and licensing.
One of the common usages of the exacqVision platform, said Green, is for traffic management. Using the video from the exacqVi-
32 campuslifesecurity.com | JULY/AUGUST 2020