Transportation

Surveillance solutions to enhance public beach safety

Organization: National Sea Rescue Institute

Location: Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Customer need: Public safety

Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, 2023

The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) is a volunteer rescue organisation who's mission is to save lives on South African waters.

Innovating to keep the South African waters safe

The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) is a non-profit organisation (NPO) that started in 1967 with one inflatable boat and a few unpaid volunteers in Cape Town. Today, the operation boasts approximately 1,200 volunteers across the country. These volunteers are highly trained and use state-of-the-art equipment, including deep-sea rescue boats and inshore surf rescue vessels, to save lives in South African waters. The organisation provides both full-time and volunteer survival swimming instructors, as well as lifeguards, who teach water safety in rural schools throughout South Africa. The NPO’s mission is to prevent drowning through education, preventative measures, and rescue. It is always on the hunt for new technologies that can assist with its work.

Cape Town has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, one of which is Strand Beach. Considered to be among some of the most scenic escapes, it also carries with it the reputation for being one of Cape Town’s most dangerous beaches and known drowning hotspots. Despite having lifeguards on duty, this sandy shore often appears in the media featuring heart-breaking stories of swimmers of all ages drowning from deadly riptides. The NSRI needed a system that could help the City of Cape Town and Strand Surf Lifesaving Club lifeguards improve their ability to spot dangerous situations and prevent drownings.

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An intelligent way to prevent drownings

The NSRI partnered with Delve Aquatic Systems – a drowning prevention and water safety technology specialist – to design the beach safety system from both a hardware and software perspective. Two Axis cameras were positioned on the roof of a 12-story block of residential apartments above the lifeguard station on Strand Beach. The cameras needed to be reliable, offering 100% uptime and high-quality imagery. Subsequently, Axis cameras were chosen for their extreme durability, excellent optics, and onboard storage. These future-proof cameras also fit into the organisation’s vision to eventually use AI and machine learning to transform sea rescue and safety.

Producing high-quality footage in real time over the internet can be difficult; it can often result in latency or bandwidth limitations. This was a challenge for the Axis cameras that were placed on NSRI boats. But thanks to Axis Zipstream, Delve Aquatic Systems was able to provide the full-resolution image at the full frame rate over restricted bandwidth networks. The cameras provided a new level of insight into flash rip currents, which had never been properly analysed or recorded before, helping the NSRI and its lifeguards identify these currents and quickly respond to pending danger. Axis’s surveillance solution will help rescuers learn from recorded events, improving both their proactivity and reactivity, thereby saving more lives.

From POC to Success

Initially, the beach safety project was a proof of concept (PoC), but after five months of success, permanent Axis cameras were installed. The NSRI now plans to expand the project across South Africa’s beaches. Due to the Axis cameras, multiple incidents were spotted, and lifeguards were dispatched to help, including children swimming alone in a dangerous area during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, capsized kayakers, and three children who were swept from the beach in a flash rip current.

The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) is a volunteer rescue organisation that is on call 24/7. Their mission is to save lives on South African waters. They are more than a rescue service and educate communities and strive to innovate and constantly evolve and extend water-safety initiatives through empowerment and visibility. In this case study, we explore how the NSRI, through a POC at Strand Beach in Cape Town, aims to save lives by using Axis cameras and analytics to spot dangerous situations and prevent drownings.