University of Las Americas in Puebla renews its surveillance system with IP video from Axis.
The Universidad de Las Americas Puebla (UDLAP) is located in a small community called Cholula in the State of Puebla, Mexico. It is one of the most important colleges in the country and, although the area is relatively safe, security is a must to preserve the integrity of the institution and protect students and staff on campus. This is the reason why they upgraded their analog cameras to an Axis IP video surveillance system.
Solution
UDLAP continuously invests a large amount of capital to strengthen its physical and educational environment, and it has a wide range of both human and technical resources. The campus comprises a total area of 185 acres, and their old analog system could not provide the appropriate overview. After analyzing their needs, UDLAP selected a scalable, forward-thinking solution with 215 cameras from Axis Communications all controlled on a Milestone XProtect Enterprise 7 VMS platform running on Pivot3 vSTACR Watch converged storage and compute appliances.
Result
The system has been a complete success. More than 700 reports have been solved since the University turned to IP video. The number of lost items has decreased, suspicious people have been detected around the campus and the incident response time has decreased. It is now possible to obtain more accurate control of the entire campus using IP video.
Social responsibility at Universidad de las Américas Puebla
The Universidad de Las Americas (UDLAP) is located in a small and quiet community in Mexico. To preserve the safety of its 10,000 students and staff within the 185- acre campus, the Director looked for a proactive system to complement their security department. “Although it was originally designed to be digital on the blueprints, the campus was equipped with an analog system that we kept for a time until we changed it for the IP cameras. This showed us the flexibility, functionality and scalability of the Axis cameras,” said Fernando Thompson de la Rosa, CIO.
Technology all around the campus
The school chose a mix of Axis cameras including fixed dome cameras such as the AXIS P3344-VE, AXIS M3004 Fixed Dome, and AXIS M3011 Fixed Dome Network Cameras; fixed network cameras such as the AXIS P1346-E and AXIS P1343-E Fixed Network Cameras; and the compact AXIS M1103 Fixed Network Camera. These cameras were installed in the classrooms and common areas at UDLAP to secure the entire campus. These IP cameras offered a wide range of advantages, such as ultra-compact sizes with an innovative design, high performance, VGA and HDTV-quality resolution video, day/night functionality, Power over Ethernet and more. The cameras with HDTV or megapixel features means the school can obtain more detail and better possibilities for identifying people and finding lost items.
Additionally, these cameras can cover a larger area with no loss of image resolution, which is very useful for such a large campus. Additionally, the pan/tilt/zoom functionality of the AXIS P5512 PTZ Dome Network Camera enables operators at a remote location to pan 360o for overview surveillance while the gatekeeper functionality automatically moves the camera to a preset position when motion is detected in a pre-defined area. This alerts the security personnel of intruders at night or in restricted areas without the need to monitor 24 hours a day. The system is controlled by six Pivot3 vSTAC Watch converged storage and compute appliances, which have the capability of archival search through an integrated storage system. The Pivot3 appliances also feature server failover to avoid recording downtime, high bandwidth to preserve video quality and no single point of failure. Milestone XProtect Enterprise is the Video Management Software, and it offers such benefits as the ability to capture vehicle plates on movement. The powerful platform supports many cameras and is designed for multisite installation. This greatly enhances entrance control at the campus.
A glance to the future
The IP surveillance system has significantly improved response time to incidents, and the system is supported by information obtained from access control and data storage. Today, eight people monitor the entire campus. The staff is able to control access and monitor the campus perimeter, as well as adjacent residential areas, as well. These personnel are trained under international standards of preventive security and civil protection. With this strategy, intruders can be detected and inappropriate behavior can be quickly identified. Numerous incidents have been solved thanks to the information obtained from the IP video surveillance system, and the actions of the well-trained security personnel. The security system success offers big savings and benefits to UDLAP. Results have been very positive, and in order to keep on track and continue the effort, UDLAP plans to grow the system with the goal of 100% coverage of their facilities. Thanks to the scalability of the IP video system, UDLAP is able to stay online with their ambitious technology mission well into the future.