Modernizing Control Room

A new national CCTV remote monitoring facility was built in Glasgow, Scotland.

Zandar FusionPro+ MultiViewers operate at The Corps in Glasgow, Scotland to safeguard local businesses.  (Photo by Bill MacGregor MSCE, The Corps Monitoring Centre, Glasgow, Scotland)

The booming local economy of the Glasgow metropolitan area in Scotland has meant that large numbers of companies have been drawn to the region in recent years, many of them to new business parks on the outskirts of the city.  These locations require effective surveillance and patrols ensuring that break-ins, fly-tipping and thefts are minimized.

Against this backdrop, security and business support suppliers The Corps have designed and had built a new national CCTV remote monitoring facility in Glasgow.  Commissioned in December 2006 and fully operational since March 2007, the control room staff currently have the facility to monitor systems utilizing a number of the leading CCTV transmission systems and to have all of these operational at any one time.

At the heart of the control room’s video switching capability is a Zandar FusionPro+ 3RU MultiViewer.  When an alarm is triggered at any of the locations served by the facility, the system automatically selects and displays an image from the nearest CCTV camera on a large, 42-inch TFT display, or on one of five LCD spot monitors located on operators’ desks.

The FusionPro+ 3RU has been integrated with an Avocent KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switching system.

“When it came to designing the control room we consulted with the National Security Inspectorate to ensure that the best and most reliable technology available was used, and that the design was as robust as possible -- it has been built to the BS5979 standard,” says Bill MacGregor MCSE, CMC Technical Manager at The Corps.

“Where are up to four operational staff in the room at any one time for 24/7 monitoring.  Depending on the job and the time of day, staff can alter or manipulate the display configuration using Zandar’s standard Z-Configurator software, directly from the operator desks.  The system design also makes use off the FusionPro+’s Clock Display feature, to ensure that all the desks are perfectly synchronized.”

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