With stunning 16th century architecture and its close proximity to Belgium's capital, Brussels, the city of Mechelen has long been one of the country's top tourist destinations. The city recently upgraded its legacy analog video surveillance system that has been in use since 2001 to a HD surveillance system comprised of nine Avigilon cameras, VMS, NVR to safeguard a population of 85,000 people, control crimes and theft in high-traffic tourist areas.
With stunning 16th century architecture and its close proximity to Belgium's capital, Brussels, the city of Mechelen has long been one of the country's top tourist destinations. The city recently upgraded its legacy analog video surveillance system that has been in use since 2001 to a HD surveillance system comprised of nine Avigilon cameras, VMS, NVR to safeguard a population of 85,000 people, control crimes and theft in high-traffic tourist areas.
“Our primary goal has always been to be a safer city for all our citizens and tourists,” said Daniel Dumoulin, police commissioner and IT manager of the city of Mechelen.
In order to make Mechelen a safer place, officials knew they had to upgrade from the classic CCTV system they had been using since 2001. In the past, grainy CCTV camera footage with inadequate zoom features cost the police force countless opportunities to identify criminals or accurately evaluate incidents.
To complement the city's existing CCTV system, the Mechelen Police Department installed nine Avigilon HD cameras ranging from 2 MP PTZ to 29 MP fixed cameras to oversee the outdoor shopping areas within the City Center as well as the exterior and parking lot of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance. Adding the Avigilon HD surveillance system has enabled police officers in Mechelen to monitor some of the city's highest traffic areas in an organized and efficient manner. With Avigilon 29 MP cameras covering the periphery and all access points of the shopping district, the police are able to get a clear image of every person who enters and exits the City Center. As a result, police officials have been able to drastically reduce investigation time and present indisputable evidence against suspects.
In the past, CCTV cameras were only effective when Mechelen security personnel were alerted of an incident in real time because they were able to adjust the analog PTZ camera and zoom in to try to identify what was happening. But in the cases when the call of the crime came afterwards, the recorded footage was unusable. “A lot of the times, the camera was positioned in a different direction from where the crime occurred, so we were missing a lot,” said Dumoulin. Finding a solution to that problem had the potential to be costly for a city with limited financial resources. “We don't have the same budget as an Amsterdam or cities with millions of people,” Dumoulin said. “You can't afford to put three or four people around the clock surveying your camera system.”
Instead, the local police used Avigilon HD Pro cameras to clearly capture the primary problem zones with a small number of cameras covering all exits and entrances. “If something occurs like a pickpocket or shoplifter, (the thief) has to pass a camera with HD,” said Dumoulin. “Even afterwards, if we receive a call from the shop owner, we can look in the images and using digital zoom, we can still get a good usable image of the criminal."