The London Borough of Wandsworth's Parking Operations Team wanted to introduce unattended CCTV traffic enforcement cameras at a number of “problem” locations as part of the shared parking service's drive to improve operational efficiency and achieve savings.
The London Borough of Wandsworth is situated south of the River Thames. It is London's ninth biggest borough in terms of population and the third biggest "inner" London borough in terms of geographical area. The five main areas are Balham, Clapham, Putney, Tooting and Wandsworth Town.
The challenge
The London Borough of Wandsworth's Parking Operations Team wanted to introduce unattended CCTV traffic enforcement cameras at a number of “problem” locations as part of the shared parking service's drive to improve operational efficiency and achieve savings. In order to identify which system would provide best value in terms of performance and running costs, competitive trials took place involving all major suppliers.
According to Adam Westwood, based in Wandsworth's Parking Operations Team, now part of the Richmond and Wandsworth shared parking service: "We continuously challenge ourselves to provide the best services at the lowest cost. Our goal is always resident satisfaction at a price taxpayers can afford to pay."
The solution
After benchmarking the technologies and performance for each system, Videalert came out on top with consistently higher capture rates, particularly in busy traffic conditions and complex moving traffic contravention scenarios. This is because the system combines ANPR with the latest video analytics algorithms to improve data accuracy and ensure the delivery of industry-leading capture rates.
Other factors that contributed to delivering the highest productivity included:
- The use of the latest ONVIF-compliant digital cameras for superior evidence quality reducing the potential for appeals
- The speed and flexibility of the automated evidence pack review suite enabling contraventions to be reviewed and validated in seconds before processing them through to the Back Office
- Automated remote monitoring of the remote devices and cameras maximising system health and availability
- The speed and flexibility of using Videalert's Hosted platform eliminating the requirement to install hardware and software on site
The benefits
Another key factor in the decisionmaking process included the flexibility of the system to capture multiple traffic contraventions from a single WAN unit to reduce infrastructure costs. In fact, the Videalert Digital Video Platform supports multiple civil traffic enforcement, traffic management, community safety and crime prevention applications from a single CCTV infrastructure simultaneously without requiring specific equipment for every point application. With an open architecture, it integrates into any environment and provides significant cost savings and high levels of future proofing by allowing additional applications to be quickly and easily added as required.
To ensure that system uptime is as close as possible to 100%, Videalert uses multi-level, 24/7 monitoring to optimise system health and maximise availability. This is supplemented with the latest selfhealing technologies to automatically detect, diagnose and recover the majority of faults with all rebooting and recovery processes taking place without human intervention.
Steve Cull, Assistant Head of Shared Parking Services for Richmond and Wandsworth, commented: “The trials demonstrated that the use of unattended cameras was justified in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and compliance. Deploying Videalert’s unique Digital Video Platform allows additional camera assets and enforcement applications to be cost effectively added, providing a future-proofed investment for civil traffic enforcement."
As a direct result of the trials, Videalert cameras were installed at an initial four locations. Wandsworth will continue to transition from its current attended system with further installations based on expected efficiency and productivity gains.
Tim Daniels, Sales and Marketing Director of Videalert added: “We offer a radically different way of using CCTV for traffic management and civil enforcement for today and tomorrow. Using sophisticated ANPR and video analytics, Videalert delivers the highest productivity whilst minimising equipment infrastructure and communication costs at every target enforcement location.”