From left: Carl Buchner, Safety Vision
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE; and David K. Beltz,
COTA SECURITY SYSTEMS MANAGER
The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) provides fixedroute
and paratransit services for greater Columbus and
Central Ohio – orchestrating more than 19 million annual
passenger trips for the area’s 1.2 million residents. COTA
has around 1,170 employees and maintains a fleet of 321 fixed-route
transit vehicles, 75 paratransit vehicles, and 12 micro-transit vehicles.
As such, the system requires a sophisticated, high-tech security and
surveillance system to maintain safety and minimize risk.
“At an organizational level, we recognized that an onboard
camera system offered us the opportunity to increase our level of
awareness and understanding with regard to what is happening in
and around our vehicles while they are on the road,” said David K.
Beltz, SECURITY SYSTEMS MANAGER for COTA, who has been
with the agency for over a decade. “This enhanced level of awareness
has allowed us to improve the quality of our service, as well as our
physical security program and risk assessment.”
COTA has relied on technology from Safety Vision to maintain that
level of awareness since the late 1990’s. Today, the fleet camera system
is composed of 321 individual video recorders and associated wireless
communication devices, nearly 2,500 cameras, and several system and
video management applications.
A network of surveillance systems
As a legacy customer, COTA runs a variety of Safety Vision systems
to ensure total surveillance of its fleet; including the RoadRecorder
series, which is an array of digital recording devices that have
evolved over the years. Currently, COTA is using a combination of the
RoadRecorder 6000, 7000, and 8000 devices throughout their fleet.
The RoadRecorder 6000, which accommodates up to 10 cameras,
records at 24 frames per second, and offers options including
dual audio and selectable recording speed, camera image size and
sensory input, has been in operation at COTA for over 12 years. The
RoadRecorder 7000 series, the first of the company’s network video
recorders (NVRs), has similarly been operating since 2012.
“COTA has always been a very progressive agency with transit
technology,” said Carl Buchner, ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE at Safety
Vision, who works closely with COTA. “They want cutting-edge
software analytics so management can have access to as much data as
possible from the vehicles. In tandem with that, the agency upgrades
their surveillance technology as necessary to ensure they maintain
the highest level of system reliability.”
In 2018, COTA deployed Safety Vision’s open platform
RoadRecorder 8000 to a number of their buses, in order to streamline
their security operations. This IP-based solution not only unifies
COTA’s entire suite of surveillance systems (fleets, facilities, stations,
and yards) within a single video management system (VMS), but
also allows COTA to have an expansive approach to their analytics.
The open nature of the hardware and software allows them to
enhance their system through a Software Development Kit (SDK)
and Application Programing Interface (API) integration process. This
ensures third-party integrations in the global market. These add on
features can range anywhere from auto redaction to facial recognition
and allows COTA to implement new technology without replacing
existing hardware and software.
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