
The Center for Education and Business (called CEU Kolding) is located in the city of Kolding, Denmark. CEU Kolding offers well-equipped facilities including some 900 personal computers that both students and teachers have access to almost round the clock. It presented the school with critical security demands.
To take action against theft and vandalism, the school decided to implement in early 2002 a new network-based surveillance solution from Milestone Systems.
The installation covers all classrooms, meeting areas, hallways and entrances, and involves 44 cameras, 30 of which are AXIS 2120 Network Cameras.The 14 others are analog cameras--most from a previous installation. Those initial investments in analog cameras, however, are not lost. They are now connected to eight video servers, including twoAXIS 2400 Video Servers and oneAXIS 2401 Video Server, which convert analog signals into digital data.
"Both the recordings and the operation of the old system were bad," recalls Svend Erik Rasmussen, Vice President at CEU Kolding. "All the images were saved on tapes, and it was very difficult and time consuming whenever we had to find a specific recording."
Hit by robberies in December 2002, the school simply searched its digital video recordings to discover that the thieves were known locally. The images were sent immediately to the police, who used them to solve the case and make their arrests.
The school reported that the networked video surveillance system has since proved to have good preventive effect, with the number of incidents falling to barely one a month, which is considerably less than other big schools. CEU Kolding also found the system to be both simple and easy to operate, as well as user-friendly when it comes to upgrades. The solution delivers much better picture quality than the previous analog system, and specific recordings can be quickly and easily identified in the system.
"We are saving both time and money – and if there is an incident, we have good evidence to solve the investigative work," says Rasmussen.