Spanish petroleum company Olea recently deployed a vehicle management system based on ALPR, consisting of 12 Axis Communications cameras and Netcamera management software, to prevent “drive-off” fuel theft at gasoline service stations. The system was proposed by Netcamera, Axis' local partner.
Spanish petroleum company Olea recently deployed a vehicle management system based on ALPR, consisting of 12 Axis Communications cameras and Netcamera management software, to prevent “drive-off” fuel theft at gasoline service stations. The system was proposed by Netcamera, Axis' local partner.
Olea is a company that has been in the service station market since the 1980s. Because it was experiencing robberies, the company decided to install an analog video surveillance system in order to have some control over what was happening at the service station at night. However, this system never offered the level of image quality expected and they decided not to use it. During the computerization stage, they began looking for solutions to manage the service station's back office, and contacted Avalon Informatica. This company installed the service station's first solution in the late 1990s.
Two years ago they began to notice an increasing number of “drive-offs”—that is, people who fill their tank and leave without paying. In order to provide a definitive solution to these security needs that would also allow them to establish a pre- and post-sale payment system, as well as to integrate this platform with the Avalon software, Olea management contacted Netcamara, which proposed a vehicle management system based on license plate recognition.
The system installed consists of seven D/N network cameras and outdoor compact cameras. These cameras cover the exterior areas of the service station. They also have two ultra-compact network cameras in the office, and three varifocal network cameras for inside the store. All the cameras are managed using Netcamara software.
Operating the system is simple: when a vehicle arrives at the service station, the cameras recognize the license plate and cross-check it against the database that the system automatically creates. In the case where the requirements set by management are met (which, in this case, is that they have previously filled-up X number of times, where X is a user-configurable parameter) on the screens of the exterior area of the service station, the captured license plate image is shown, and, with it, a picture of a traffic light—in this case, a green light. This means that the customer is a “regular” and the pump unlocks to allow the vehicle to refuel without prepayment. If this requirement is not met, the light shown is red. This means the customer must come to the office to pay before refueling.
“One of the aspects that really convinced us was that the system allows us to apply any loyalty program without printing any type of card, because it automatically applies the discounts simply by recognizing the vehicle license plate,” said Alberto Contreras, Manager, Olea. “The versatility of IP video has allowed us to satisfy more of our needs with a single system.”
The system also allows license plates to be entered by hand on either of the two lists. The system has been up and running since November 2012, and today the database contains over 11,000 license plate records. It has managed to reduce the number of “drive-offs” to zero in recent months. The owner is very satisfied because it has also allowed the service station to establish this system for identifying regular customers, which successfully reduces the 15 percent per-customer loss associated with implementing prepaid systems.