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Volume 2
Safer, Smarter Cities
Require a New Approach to
Surveillance Infrastructure
Wayne Arvidson, Quantum’s Vice President of Video
Surveillance and Security Solutions
Mainstream adoption of high resolution IP cameras both for
city surveillance and for protection of government buildings
and critical infrastructure has resulted in a dramatic
increase in storage capacity used for surveillance over the
last couple of years—and the trend is going to continue.
Today, HD-compliant 1080p 25/30 frames per second (fps)
specifications have become the minimum expected for new
cameras. {1} The deployment of more cameras capturing
sharp, detailed images is one reason the total RAW
capacity of enterprise storage used for video surveillance is
expected to increase 48% in 2016, according to IHS {2},
but other factors are contributing as well.
Legal considerations are impacting data retention, resulting
in the need for more storage capacity. Video files from
surveillance cameras are being kept longer to satisfy
litigation and judicial requirements and to provide valuable
forensic evidenc e during investigations. As a result, data
visibility and evidence of chain of custody are critically
important to maintain, putting stress on storage
infrastructures to accommodate the volume.
Body-worn cameras used by law enforcement officers are
impacting storage capacity, and more wide-spread use of
these units is expected in 2016. {3} Video footage from
these devices not only drives the need for more capacity,
but it also affects data retention. Given the importance of
footage captured from these cameras for legal and
insurance reasons alone, the data must be retained for a
long time—in some cases, many years.
Add to this the growing list of benefits made possible by the
correlation of video data with input from “smart” devices,
and the demand for storage—and storage integration—
explodes. Embedded sensor technology is enabling cities
to become smarter, and data from that sensor input can be
integrated with video data and analyzed to help make
urban communities more attractive. Today, vehicle and
pedestrian traffic can be captured and integrated with
sensor input from buses, trains, and subway stations to
minimize congestion.
Similarly, parking facilities can be monitored and the video
combined with input from smart meters to reduce
March 2016 Edition
bottlenecks and to improve consumer satisfaction.
Data Storage – Obstacle or Enabler of Smarter, Saver
Cities
All these factors are converging to create a tremendous
opportunity. However, realizing the full potential of the
opportunity will require a different approach to storage
design and infrastructure projects. For analytics to be
effective, data must be kept for a long period and integrated
with input from many different sources because trends and
patterns emerge from combining disparate data sets and
analyzing them over time. The longer the data is retained,
the better the quality of the analytics, which leads to more
accurate conclusions and better decisions. A typical
approach to storage design, where each department is
viewed as a stand-alone entity, can result in islands of
storage—functional for the singular purpose of storing video
data but incapable of integrating easily with other systems
and thereby inhibiting the potential of the data to be applied
for other uses. Consequently, the traditional project-based
approach to video surveillance storage must give way to a
broader, more strategic view.
A successful design requires input and cooperation from all
departments, agencies, and IT. Video-based data is vital to
delivering safer, smarter cities. By factoring in the various
ways video data will be used early in the planning cycle will
help to ensure an integrated storage design is developed
that is high-performing, scalable, and cost-effective.
A tiered architecture utilizing a combination of high
performance disk, secondary disk, tape, and cloud storage
is the most cost-effective design. A tiered approach is
flexible and capable of scaling as needed to accommodate
growth as camera counts go up, retention times increase,
image formats change, and file sizes grow larger. In
addition, a tiered approach can be deployed enterprisewide, simplifying integration with other systems and
enabling advanced analytics.
New camera technology, sensor input from smart devices,
and analytics are changing the surveillance industry,
offering new opportunities for security professionals to
deliver on the promise of safer, smarter cities. However, a
more holistic approach to surveillance infrastructure
projects is needed in order to architect a storage platform
capable of cost-effectively meeting the capacity,
performance, scalability, and integration needs required to
capitalize on the opportunity.
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