Pakistani Housing Complex Improves Video Surveillance Using Fewer Cameras

Customer

The Khawaja Group of Industries, founded in Pakistan in 1972, is a well-established owner of large industrial and commercial complexes. In addition to operating rice mills, rice processing units and natural gas and petrol pumps, Khawaja Group has also built a large-scale housing complex in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Challenge

The Khawaja Group wanted to provide video surveillance for the newly constructed facility to increase security and surveillance throughout the large-scale complex. The security objective was to increase image resolution and coverage area.

Megapixel Solution

The Khawaja Group engaged Muhammad Rizwan Waqar, managing director of TECHNOSYS, Karachi, Pakistan. TECHNOSYS specializes in video surveillance security design and implementation. The need for high resolution and wider coverage led the Khawaja Group to consider megapixel cameras to meet their surveillance needs at the new housing complex.

Mr. Waqar chose megapixel IP cameras supplied by Arecont Vision. Mr. Waqar especially favors Arecont Vision’s SurroundVideo® 180-degree panoramic view cameras, which are cost-effective and designed for applications where mechanical pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) devices might otherwise be used, or where multiple cameras would be needed to view expansive areas. Four sensors inside each camera provide a sweeping 180-degree panoramic view of large areas without missing anything that happens, compared to PTZ cameras that look in one direction at a time. Forensic zoom can be used to see close-up video of any section of the panoramic view in real-time or in recorded video.

The new system for the Khawaja Group uses 32 Arecont Vision cameras in all: 15 Arecont Vision 3-megapixel cameras, 10 Arecont Vision 2-megapixel cameras and seven 180-degree panoramic view cameras. These were selected because of their capability to provide more coverage at a lower cost than many more standard- resolution cameras.

Megapixel Benefit

Megapixel video images allow the system to need fewer cameras to cover the required areas. The megapixel systems provide greater return on investment (ROI) because fewer cameras are needed and there is less infrastructure cost (cables, network switches, servers, VMS licenses, camera mounts, housings, etc.). Overall, Arecont Vision megapixel cameras deliver lower total cost of ownership.

“Arecont Vision cameras were chosen for their performance, versatility and greater cost efficiency,” said Khawaja Ahmad Saeed of the Khawaja Group of Industries in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Greater resolution boosts the effectiveness of the system, too. For example, a higher-resolution camera is more likely to be able to read a license plate number or provide a clear image of a face than standard definition IP or analog cameras.

“Less need for manpower is contributing to ROI, and the technology investment will be offset within a year based on requiring fewer guards,” said Mr. Saeed. Also related to ROI, Mr. Saeed says that avoiding the possible costs of just one security incident would potentially pay for the cost of the project.

The ability of H.264 video compression to eliminate bandwidth and storage concerns translates to lower cost by reducing the amount of required disk storage. Smaller H.264-based file sizes mean the VMS server uses less server CPU resources for greater system efficiency.