Constant monitoring

By: Infinova

The Miami Beach Parking Department is responsible for performing this work on streets and lots throughout the city, including six multi-level parking lots. As with all parking structures, public or private, they lead to liability problems. Cars are vandalized, accidents occur and vehicles are stolen. When any of these things happen, the owner of the establishment usually bears the blame.

"The main reason the Miami Beach Parking Department installed surveillance equipment in its garages was to create a documentation system that would allow it to respond to liability lawsuits. However, an additional use in Miami Beach is employee monitoring, ensuring that they provide immediate and attentive service to city dwellers," said Vincent Vento, CEO of ATC International Communications (ACTi), a Miami security integrator with projects throughout the southeastern United States and Latin America.

In the U.S., ACTi has clients such as the Shingle Creek Resort and the luxury tower developments Ocean One and Ocean Two, whose advertisements are recognized by readers of airline passenger publications. In Latin America, projects include Sersaprosa, the largest transporter of securities in armored cars in Central America, Dell Computer's customer call centers and Microsoft's offices in Latin America.

According to Vento, the Parking Department has an administrative staff in each garage that uses the real-time surveillance system, to supervise the employees who work in the ticket vending booths. The Department wants to ensure that its employees interact with customers in the parking lots in a friendly and cordial manner.

Cost reduction
"It's very important that the Parking Department can document every car that enters or leaves the structure, as well as its driver," Vento explains.  "For them to act as deterrents, we don't hide the cameras. We want them to be visible. As a result, the Department has dramatically reduced car theft and decreased vandalism incidents."

"There are three basic strategies we use when placing cameras in a parking structure," said the CEO of ACTi: "First of all, at every entrance and exit, the surveillance system needs to capture images of the car, the license plate and the face of the driver entering and leaving the parking lot. The recorded images allow to have a record of the person who was behind the wheel, a great help to solve the lawsuits for theft. And, if there really was a robbery, the system captures the face of the perpetrator."

"Secondly, the cameras should cover all the entrance and exit ramps on all floors," Vento said. "It is in the turns where most accidents occur. With the video recorded, it is documented whose violation it was, a great help for cautious drivers and their insurers."

"Finally, the cameras must be recording video on all the ramps down," adds the entrepreneur. "That's where most incidents of vandalism happen.  With a clear picture of the culprit, the police have a tool to search for and prove the vandal's guilt."

"In addition, anticipating future expansion into digital technology, analog cameras use CAT 5 cabling up to Infinova servers. When we eventually add IP cameras, there will be no additional costs per transmission," Adds Vento.

"Other important aspects we faced were those of the extended recording, as well as the quality of the recordings. Again, when the Department upgrades to IP, we want to have the ability to use the same equipment, protecting your investment. To help us convince the Parking Department that we had chosen the right equipment and vendor, you had the perfect reference, the Dade County educational establishments in Miami, an Infinova equipment user, whose demand exceeds US$25 million annually, "explains the executive.

"We told the Parking Department that they also needed a high degree of reliability," Vento recalls, adding that "we emphasized that if or when a problem occurred, such as a malfunctioning DVR, Infinova's advanced replacement policy and equipment delivery would keep the system installed and running. In speaking with their school district peers, the directors of the Parking Department had a good opinion about our choice."

One problem that ATCi and the Parking Department did not address was that of lighting, which is often an inconvenience in parking structures.

"The Miami Beach Parking Department is a very progressive organization," Vento emphasizes, adding that "although the parking lots were built in the late '50s and early '60s, we avoided the typical lighting problems of dark industrial cement in those structures, as the lots were painted a light shade to take advantage of all light sources. both natural and its improved lighting systems. It's an idea we'd like to encourage all parking operators to follow."

Transmission and storage of images
"Our Infinova servers are configured so that they can be connected to a Storage Network (SAN) in the garage," anticipates Vento. "Thus, the images are transmitted from the cameras to the servers over CAT 5 cables that connect to the SAN over CAT 6 cables. These SANs can support a large amount of recorded data. For example, parking lots have 107 cameras on average. The SAN will store 120 days of recorded images at 7 frames/second. Four months is more than enough time to save recordings for any possible reasonable demand."

In the near future, all cameras will send video to a centralized monitoring system and all data will be saved in one place. Transmission from one parking lot to another will be done using fiber or wireless systems that the City has already installed.

Today and tomorrow
"The Miami Beach Parking Department is a pretty satisfied customer," Vento says. "They have quick access to the recorded data, which they use to evaluate different situations. They can quickly determine who was the perpetrator of the crime and what happened before the event. Using the same system, they can also evaluate employee performance."

"This is a very South Beach-type story. In the parking lot, on the upper level in South Beach, cameras captured a guy in his yellow Corvette wearing tires up and down the ramp as if he were at the local race track. However, by the time Security went upstairs, he had escaped and left the parking lot. Of course, the cameras had captured the appearance of the car, the license plate and the driver's face. Thanks to this, the authorities soon discovered who the 'Machote' was and contacted him. Since his face was clearly seen in the video, he didn't have much to say."

As for the future, building on past success, ATCi is installing a surveillance system in the parking lot of the Miami Beach Convention Center and looks forward to working with the Parking Department for many more years.

What is the secret of your success with the Parking Department? "As with any project, the reliability of the equipment is critical. If a camera is turned off, there will be no images. If the DVR is turned off, there will be no recording. It's actually that simple," Vento concluded.