Making CCTV more than just a deterrent

Thousands of CCTV cameras are capturing your image as you pass through the streets of Adelaide every day but are they really effective?

Having CCTV cameras is a great deterrent to crime but often they do not actually provide any evidence of use for convicting offenders due to the lack of a quality image of the persons face.

An Ideal Surveillance System

For a CCTV system to be effective, it requires cameras that capture the crime AND cameras that identify the suspect. This typically cannot be achieved by the same camera scene as one is a wide overview image and is commonly from the ceiling height. The other needs to be a tight shot of the persons face and be low enough to see under the brim of a hat.
Left is a typical surveillance image of a good quality but there is insufficient detail when the image is zoomed in. Additionally if the person had a hat on, you would not see their eyes.

Typical camera scene to observe people in a business does not give identification quality

Identifying a person

To identify a person, the camera needs an unobstructed view of their face and the person should occupy 50% of the scene height when using a 2 megapixel camera.

Below is a great image to identify a person from unless they are wearing a hat, at which point you would not see their eyes.

The solution

The ideal solution is a camera mounted at the entry door or in the image above, on a pole at the end of the check out at a height of 1.7 metres but this puts the camera at risk of vandalism. We have a solution to overcome this using a high definition 720p HD covert camera that can be fitted into various structures including the door frame itself, a shop display or security scanners.

Security & Technology Services are behind Adelaide’s largest distributed CCTV system comprising over 600 cameras with a central monitoring centre. They have the experience to support your IP CCTV & security requirements.