Mobile CCTV Network to tackle anti-social behaviour in Glasgow
04 June 2007
Glasgow company Essential Viewing are providing the technology behind an innovative community safety scheme which will distribute video from nearly 400 CCTV cameras in the city to hand held devices.
Glasgow City Council on Friday (March 23) launched Glasgow Community Safety Services, which will enable police and security personnel to obtain live images from 390 CCTV cameras and additional mobile cameras via a control room at Blochairn, on the city’s north side.
The aim is to tackle anti-social behaviour by providing instant images transmitted using Essential Viewing’s video encoding technology direct to hand-held devices. The project has been managed by Systems Integrators RACAM Security & Communications, who chose Essential Viewing’s product, essentialVision, which enables high-quality video images to be transmitted at low power and low cost, for example by conventional mobile GPRS and 3G networks.
The deal is an important one for Essential Viewing who are based at Hillington Park Innovation Centre and have won recent contracts across the UK.
“The Glasgow project is a perfect example of what our technology can do, delivering really high-quality images across mobile networks,”
commented Les Gaw, director at Essential Viewing.
“We are attracting significant attention from systems integrators and project managers given the task of co-ordinating large-scale safety and security operations where the live availability of video and still images is a key element of the project. These include road safety, community safety and policing operations.”
Brian Maguire, director of RACAM, said:
“We were delighted to win this contract from Glasgow City Council, and it is very pleasing that we were able to use another locally-based business, Essential Viewing, which has developed a state-of-the-art system.
“The Glasgow project is a very exciting one, with real results in the form of a means of tackling anti-social behaviour on the streets of Glasgow, and the real possibility of reducing that problem.”
The radical partnership between Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police is the first of its kind in the UK, and brings together 500 staff and £25m of assets which will be directed towards the city’s campaign against anti-social behaviour.
About Essential Viewing
Essential Viewing provides a suite of products that enable the wide area transport of real-time and on-demand video streams over any communications network, including GPRS, 3G and Satellite. At the core of the solution lies the patented video compression and transmission technologies that set Essential Viewing apart in the field of real-time low bandwidth video. Following on from early commercial success, the company has continued to develop their video solutions to meet the wider requirements of the low bandwidth wireless video marketplace.
Contact Details:
Les Gaw – Chief Operating Officer
Essential Viewing Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)141 585 6370
Email: enquiries@essential-viewing.com
About RACAM Security & Communications
RACAM Security & Communications Limited was founded in 1998 and is a multi-disciplined company specialising in all aspects of the security industry, in particular the pre-build installation and commissioning of CCTV systems. Working as a sub-contractor to a wide range of companies such as ADT Fire and Security, Balfour Kilpatrick and Semple Cochrane Plc, they also work directly for Glasgow City Council where they currently maintain the private fibre networks for the Council’s public space CCTV system.
Contact Details:
Brian Maguire – Director
Racam Security & Communications Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)141 882 9333
Email: racam@racam.demon.co.uk
More information available at www.racamuk.co.uk