Surveillance for Schools and Universities

Big or small, the benefits that can be had from having surveillance cameras up around a school, college or university can be huge. Not only do they provide added security (and, by extension, peace of mind) for administrators and students alike during times when classes are in (for instance, helping watch for students sneaking out of class or providing valuable evidence should a fight break out), they can also watch for vandalism and theft when school isn’t in session. Perhaps most grimly, though, the staggering instance of violence on school campuses both in the United States and abroad has made surveillance cameras a necessity for many schools.

Unsurprisingly, though, many administrators have no choice but to place surveillance systems on the back burner indefinitely, most often due to time or budget constraints (especially in the case of public schools), or sometimes even thanks to the unfamiliar territory surveillance presents. Even with the tightest budget and busiest schedule, though, a school or university of any size can achieve the level of security it desires that will last for over a decade to come.

This can primarily be accomplished with the use of mesh technology, as seen with the PC Witness Pro series of NVR\DVRs. To explain how this works, consider a large university with a campus spread out over several acres of land that needs to place cameras on several buildings around campus. Conventional wisdom dictates that the school would have to figure out some way of running cable the entire distance between the buildings to be monitored and the base DVR where recording takes place, however with mesh-capable systems this is not the case. By simply equipping each building to be monitored with an internet-capable DVR (even one as simple as the 1304NET for basic surveillance) and an internet drop, it is possible to use the campus’ existing local area network to allow a remote mother station (an NVR\DVR like the PC Witness Pro V\RT, for instance) to consolidate all cameras on the network to one location (in other words, the daughter systems will use the internet to "talk" to the mother by transmitting the video taken by their cameras). This offers two distinct advantages: firstly, since we’re using the internet to accomplish this, the daughter and mother systems can literally be anywhere in the world and still mesh, and secondly, since the remote cameras have their own separate DVR, should the connection between the two DVRs ever be lost, recording will still take place locally, maintaining the cohesion of the security system on a local level (a feature not even IP cameras can offer).

That said, the question of where to physically place cameras around campus still remains. Even though mesh technology can save on installation (since all cable runs would be relatively short, no costly trenching or poling of cable across campus would be necessary), the cost of an all-encompassing surveillance system can get costly very quickly even for a small school. It’s possible to escape this with a bit of forethought, though, since it’s rarely necessary to cover every square inch of a school.

One quick and easy way to monitor a campus is by simply covering the entry and exit points. Simple bullet cameras placed on the outside of the school (the KG-190SWB would provide an expensive but high-quality solution to this end) would not only monitor students as they enter the building but also watch the perimeter of campus as well, while as an alternative (or possible addition) color dome cameras on the interior catching face shots as students walk in (for example, the KG-602DSP) would not only provide easily-verifiable evidence of students’ attendance, but also catch students leaving, as well. Using this method, even a fairly large campus can be secured very cheaply and easily without any aid of mesh technology: simply hard-wiring each camera into a single DVR would prove more than sufficient.

The possible layout above does assume that all buildings are relatively close (say, within a few hundred feet) of each other, and that’s not always the case. Especially once we start considering colleges and universities, even a relatively small campus is still very large by normal standards. It is in these instances that mesh technology makes surveillance systems much more feasible than they would be otherwise since potentially thousands of feet of cable ceases to be a necessity. When securing individual buildings, it’s still easiest to focus on entry and exit points as described above, however it is easy to branch beyond that if it is necessary to monitor points of sale, dining areas, information desks, or other sensitive areas of interest. In cases such as those, all that would need to be done would be to add more cameras (usually domes or bullets as the case may be) and provide a DVR that could handle more cameras wiring in (for instance, a PC Witness Pro LT system). If there are open quads or exterior areas that need to be covered bullets may still do the job, however to see longer distances varifocal lens cameras (Such as the KG-230VFX or the KG-802) may also be necessary. Like interior cameras, these would usually be mounted on the building that houses the local DVR they would plug into.

Regardless of how many cameras are on each individual building, all that would be needed back at the main office would be a single NVR\DVR (ideally the PC Witness Pro V\RT
, or RT for added power) to accept the incoming feeds from the remote DVRs and consolidate all recording into one location. Additionally, since in this scenario both the daughter and mother DVRs would be internet accessible, administrators will have the option of logging onto any single DVR, or onto the mother DVR to view all cameras at once, and since each building has its own independent DVR, recording is completely insulated from network blackouts.

At this point, the interesting thing that sticks out is how very similar providing surveillance for a very small or very large campus is. On a small scale, one need only provide cameras for sensitive areas around a building or cluster of buildings, on a larger scale one simply takes several different and remote small systems and networks them together to make a centrally monitored large system. The basic principles that govern the two are remarkably similar, and appropriately their ultimate goal, the safety and security of campus and those who learn there, is the same. Perhaps most importantly from the outset, though, is that either system can provide that security at an attainable cost in a reasonable timeframe that should be able to keep even the most stringent budget plans and schedules satisfied.