International. ONVIF, the global leader of the initiative for the standardization of IP-based physical security products, announced that Highways England has adopted an ONVIF-focused open standards approach to video technology to continuously expand and manage its CCTV system and national highway traffic.
The use of an open standards-based CCTV system allows the national transportation organization to support existing CCTV cameras while offering an avenue to add new cameras compatible with the ONVIF Profile S from a wide variety of vendors to the system.
Highways England sought a standards-based approach to its CCTV and traffic system, which monitors England's motorways and major roads, to maximise the value of its specially designed CCTV cameras and to help keep taxpayer-funded expenses as low as possible. In addition to enabling continuous monitoring of existing CCTV assets and a gradual migration of legacy analog assets to IP, a standards-based approach offers Highways England the ability to use innovative CCTV technology as it appears in the general market. As part of the OPEN STANDARDS approach focused on ONVIF, Highways England will specify that all new cameras added to the CCTV system must be compatible with the ONVIF Profile S, while the registration must be compatible with the ONVIF Profile G.
"Government entities and city councils are increasingly choosing to base their physical security infrastructure on open standards, such as those set by ONVIF, to maintain a CCTV system that is vendor-neutral, flexible and future-proof," said Jason Moss, technical director of Intelligent Transportation for Mouchel. the consulting group that assists Highways England with its CCTV system. "This approach allows Highways England, with the help of its system integrator Costain, to migrate to an open standards-based system gradually as specially designed cameras reach the end of their service life and are replaced by models that have features suitable for use and are compatible with the ONVIF Profile S from different vendors."
"This collaboration with Highways England is valuable because we are offered the opportunity to work closely with an end user who is solving a real problem that many organisations share: the need to modernise their CCTV infrastructure without replacing their entire system," said Per Björkdahl, Chairman of the ONVIF Steering Committee. "An added benefit of the collaboration is that Costain has become a member of ONVIF and will bring valuable perspective to ONVIF's work in the future."
Highways England and two other major stakeholders are also joining forces with ONVIF to establish standard interfaces that can be used to allow users of their legacy and future CCTV systems to securely access their respective images. This will provide a truly open standards-based approach and offer flexibility in the selection of suppliers for Highways England's future operations.
Founded in 2008, ONVIF is a leading and widely recognized industry forum that drives interoperability of IP-based physical security products. The organization has a global membership base comprised of established camera companies, video management and access control systems, and more than 7000 products compatible with their profiles. With Profile S for video streaming, Profile G for logging and storage, Profile C for physical access control, Profile Q for enhanced, out-of-the-box functionality, and the candidate version of Profile A for access control configuration, ONVIF continues to work with its members to expand the number of IP interoperability solutions that CAN BE PROVIDED by SUPPORTED ONVIF products.
For more information on SUPPORTED ONVIF products, including supported vendors and models, please visit the ONVIF website: www.onvif.org
