Brazil. The Instituto de Física de la Universidad de São Paulo (IFUSP) reported that it replaced its old analog video surveillance system with 100% IP and PoE solutions, developed by the company Axis Communications.
In this way, it seeks to protect students, teachers and employees from crimes such as theft, while with the support of the integrator Ziva greater control is exercised over access to the data center, considered a valuable resource for the Brazilian scientific community.
"The university system offers an application with QR Code but no turnstile could read the code and that was fundamental for us, since, in addition to classes, there are academic events that bring together more than 400 external guests, making manual registration impossible. We then decided to use an Axis camera connected to the turnstiles to read the QR Code, which allows us to control the entry on a daily basis and also on special occasions," explains David Bärg, Systems Analyst at the Institute of Physics.
Immediate results
The first achievement of the system was to minimize thefts of personal belongings, inside and outside the IFUSP headquarters. The three-story, 150-meter-long building houses physics students, but also other university majors who have classes there. Since there was no access control before, thefts increased. The solution was to install turnstiles, but the real challenge was to integrate the system into the database of the authoritative academic community.
According to Bärg, the mere presence of the cameras was enough to reduce bicycle thefts, one of the main means of transport on campus, which has an area of almost 3.7 million square meters.
In addition, the saving of resources allowed to recover the amount invested in the project in just two months of use.
Data Center Security
According to a ranking prepared by the Center for Studies in Science and Technology of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, the University of São Paulo is the ninth in research production worldwide.
By virtue of the above, an intelligent protection system was implemented for the IFUSP data center, since it houses the advances of research groups that use High Performance Computing (HPC) machines for the development of their work.
"Our Data Center centralizes the machines of the different research groups. It is a colocation model by which we provide them with uninterrupted electricity as well as air conditioning. However, the maintenance of the machines corresponds to each project. Therefore, researchers sometimes need to access the site to perform some intervention, but we could not simply distribute the access keys without having an entry control," explains the IFUSP systems analyst.
This situation was solved by automating the doors with Axis controllers and network cameras, which grant access according to the visitor's hierarchy. In this way, only employees and those responsible for each computer cluster can enter, even at night or on weekends.
From video surveillance to blended learning
Finally, an automation process was carried out in the reception of some buildings that previously had external guards 24 hours a day. This was achieved through the use of video intercoms provided by Axis, equipped with a Full HD camera and specific features to respond to lighting conditions, visitor height and ambient noise. Thus, the entrance to these places is released through the QR code or in the manner of a remote concierge.
