Dallastown Area School District is located in York County, 34 miles south of Harrisburg, in the south central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.The school district's IT department sought a flexible IP video surveillance system that would allow administrative staff and the school's resource officer to easily search and playback recorded video to determine the events surrounding incidents at the schools.
End User:
Dallastown Area School District is located in York County, 34 miles south of Harrisburg, in the south central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The district serves nearly 6,000 students in five kindergartens through fifth grade elementary school, a sixth grade to eighth grade middle school and a grade nine through grade twelve high school. The district employs 417 instructional staff, 277 support staff and 30 administrators.
Business Objective:
The school district's IT department sought a flexible IP video surveillance system that would allow administrative staff and the school's resource officer to easily search and playback recorded video to determine the events surrounding incidents at the schools. Secretaries also needed to view video of the entranceways from their desks, in order to see a person requesting access to the school before unlocking the doors.
Solution:
Nearly 120 NWD-455 FlexiDome IP cameras and NWD-495 FlexiDome DN IP cameras monitor the hallways and cafeterias in the district's high school and middle school. The Day/Night cameras provide an extended dynamic range and mechanically switching IR filter to capture video in areas that have low light or that are near windows with excessive light.
For recording video, the cameras stream signals across the district's separate security IP network for storage on five iSCSI RAIDs. Video Recording Manager (VRM) creates a virtual pool of storage using all of the iSCSI RAIDs, divides the total capacity into one Gigabyte blocks and allocates storage for video recording to each of the IP cameras as needed.
With cameras that stream to iSCSI RAIDs, the district avoids using NVRs, which would have required extra time and funds to support over the life of the system. The district's streamlined system design and use of VRM software made installation easier. For example, recording settings were programmed in less than a day, compared to the five days needed for an NVR-based system.
This system design is extremely flexible, allowing the IT department to adjust frame rates of cameras in important locations without stopping the system from recording, reallocating storage disk space or reformatting the storage. The district uses the VIDOS Video Management Software Suite to search and playback video. Bosch VIP XD Decoders also transform the digital signal to analog for viewing on monitors.
Result:
"The system helps our administrators more quickly identify which students were involved in incidents that happen in the schools," said Brian Arnold, network manager, Dallastown Area School District. "The students are more likely to be truthful about the role they played, when they see themselves on recorded video." In addition to the cameras already installed, the district's IT department plans to install AutoDome Modular IP cameras around the exterior of the school buildings and in and around the five elementary schools in the district to help protect the younger students from external threats.