Designed by Pro Security Ghana Ltd, in what is understood to be the largest IP CCTV surveillance system in Africa, all celebration events were monitored and recorded for safety and security.

“Being able to bring back high-resolution CCTV surveillance information from just about anywhere in the city has enormous benefits for all the local agencies involved such as National Security, the Department of Sports and the Department of Roads.  These bodies are interested in looking at individual areas all over Accra and can isolate cameras for a specific event.  The monitoring system is also used for general security, crowd management, traffic monitoring and health & safety.  For Ghana 50-years, the system was used to monitor high volumes of people and traffic at the event” comments Martin Parry, technical adviser and head of system design to Pro Security Ghana. 

The opening ceremony held in Independence Square was attended by President John Kufuor who lit the independence flame to the cheering of the crowds decked in national colours, making this one of the largest national events ever to be held in Ghana. 

Pro Security Ghana has been providing and maintaining security systems to the Ghanaian Government’s National Security for the past five years and has built the system into what it is today. 

Pelco ESPRIT integrated pan, tilt and zoom and static cameras are also clustered and located in a number of areas, including Independence square and also in strategically important road intersections.  In Independence square two static Pelco cameras are also installed. 

At each location the cameras are linked to Bosch Video Jet and VIPX video encoders.  These units provide dual stream encoding for local and remote monitoring at defined bit rates as well as real-time control of the Pelco ESPRIT cameras.

The surveillance images are sent back to a central control room or fall back room via Wavesight microwave IP links. These IP bridges provide up to 100 Megabits of through put which is more than enough for the Bosch encoders and provide a seamless network with room for future expansion.

Nicola King is head of the project for Pro Security and recently joined the company to oversee the development of the system. “It has been a big challenge to put this work together in such a short time scale.  It has been very rewarding to see the high quality video back at the control rooms. The Sicura software and Bosch hardware is comprehensive, but friendly to the operator and straight forward for installer to configure.”

In the control rooms, operations staff and officials can watch the surveillance images using 40-inch GM-H40L2G LCD monitors and numerous high-resolution CRT monitors from JVC Professional Europe. 

Ultra-high resolution evo2sx+ professional DLPTM projectors from projection design are also used for the large-screen display of critical surveillance images and computer data in front of the operators’ desks.  The projectors were specified and supplied by Iain Ambler, Product Specialist at RGB Communications located in the UK.

“We could not have achieved the same results of a true networking of information using a traditional analogue system.  The combination of equipment has been selected for ease of operation and each of the companies involved provided outstanding support.  A lot of time was spent at the front end of the system to ensure that images could be seamlessly monitored from the locations.  All the functionality of the system can be controlled by the simple click of a mouse and this includes camera call-up, control and replay. We are now looking at the next phase of the system which will focus on distribution of other service information” ends Parry.