COPYRIGHT SPOTTERRF DEC 2013
White Paper - Reducing the Cost of Video Surveillance by 88+% by Logan Harris CEO, SpotterRF December 2013
If you have a large surveillance area that is greater than 100m x 100m, chances are that most of that site is not being monitored using common camerabased security systems. Why not? Because the cost of that many cameras and the infrastructure to support them are so high. Let us analyze the cost of a 200 m x 300 m (60,000 m^2) site where the perimeter, interior and preferably some of the exterior needs to be monitored. Then we will compare the cost of a camera only system to the combination of SpotterRF Compact Surveillance Radar (CSR) in combination with a much smaller number of cameras. To cover one side of the perimeter with a thermal camera a FLIR SR612 thermal camera with 50mm lens or similar would be required. See coverage areas in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 Coverage area of SR612 (Reference VideoIQ and FLIR) The SR612 can cover 9700 m^2. That means you will need at least 4 cameras for the perimeter and 2 more for the interior, for a total of 6 cameras on 4 poles.
Thermal Camera SR-612 Camera System - Equipment & Installation Costs A thermal fixed camera is chosen so that it can be used day and night and in light fog, however no camera camera can provide accurate detection in all weather conditions. Thermal camera performance is significantly affected by rain, fog and snow. See tech note from FLIR.
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Coverage Cost of Area (m^2) Sensor Detection on Humans
FLIR Thermal Camera SR612
9760
$15K
Installation Cost (poles,wiring, trenching)
Maintenance Cost
Total Equipment Cost (6 cameras and 4 poles)
$15K+/pole
Monthly cleaning of lenses. Periodic readjustment of setup due to changing seasons
$150K
Table 1. Summary of Video Installation Costs
Thermal Camera SR-612 Camera System Operating Costs - (Storage, Communications, Analysis) Storage Costs Now, lets look at the cost of monitoring, storing and transmitting the video. For example, 4CIF resolution video at 15 frames/sec compressed with H.264 requires bandwidth of 600 kbps and 270 MBytes of storage space per hour. In one day, that is 6 Gbytes per camera. For a small site with 6 cameras that is 1.2Mbps bandwidth and 36 Gbytes of storage per day. That is 1 Terabyte of storage per month! (White paper on bandwidth and storage requirements of IP Video) A 4 Terabyte Network Storage server is about $1,000. This means you you need roughly $330 per month in new storage for a small site of 6 cameras to store all of that video data.
Communication Costs For many remote locations, a satellite communications (satcom) link is the only communication service that is available. A dedicated 1Mbps satcom link runs in the neighborhood of $5,000 $7,000 per month. So, if you want 4CIF resolution at 15 frames/sec on 15 cameras, the cost would be in the neighborhood of $50,000 per month in bandwidth costs alone (Satellite bandwidth and cost whitepaper)! To reduce this cost, resolution and frames per second may be reduced significantly. This makes the video feeds far less ineffective for real time detection of incidents and can only be used for forensics purposes after the fact for remote sites. Alternatively to Satcom, a direct DSL, cable, or fiber line may be installed. For a site in the rural U.S. the cost for a high speed Internet connection can run between $200 to $500 per month. For a site with cell phone coverage the cost run from between $60/month for 2 GBytes of data to $100/month for 10 GBytes of data.
Video Analysis Costs Even when you do have the network to support the bandwidth required there are still more costs involved. Additionally, the cost of a Video Management System starts at a few thousand dollars for a few cameras and ramping up quickly from there. Now, you have all of that data. How do you utilize it? Typically, you have 2/6 www.spotterrf.com
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security personnel watching the video feeds for something to happen. A security guard can watch up to 8 video monitors at a time with rotating camera feeds. Research has demonstrated that an observer viewing two monitors with automatic image switchover will miss up to 45% of all activity in scenes after only 12 minutes. After 22 minutes, this increases to up to 95%. Amazingly, this research was based on only two monitors! (See Automatic Surveillance and CCTV Operator Workload School of …) Frequently changing out personnel for fresh eyes further increases costs at a rate of around $300 per day for each 24/7 personnel job. Just having one security guard watching the video feeds from one site costs on average $8.3K per month and is still ineffective in doing so.
6 Cameras
Storage/year
Comm/year
Analysis
Total Operating Cost / year
$4K
$6K
$100K
$110K
Table 2. Summary of Video Monitoring Costs
Compact Surveillance Radar System Costs Compact Surveillance Radar (CSR) uses the same radar principles as other large Ground Surveillance Radar (GSR) but utilizes the very latest in high frequency integrated circuits, high frequency printed circuit board design, DSPs and FPGAs to achieve a revolutionary reduction in size and increased performance at a reduced price. Using low cost military grade CSR, it is possible to cover the entire site with one SpotterRF C40 unit at a cost similar to one SR612 camera, as illustrated at the oil well site shown in Figure 2 below.
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Figure 2 SpotterRF C40 Compact Radar Coverage Area The illustration above shows the coverage area of a SpotterRF C40 Radar, which for a walking person is an ellipse that is 350m long by 300m wide with an area of 82,467 square meters. The coverage area of one C40 is greater than 8 SR612 thermal cameras! Because of the much larger coverage area of the CSR, only one pole needs to be installed, significantly reducing installation costs as tabulated below. Coverage Cost of Area (m^2) Sensor Detection on Humans
SpotterRF C40 Compact Radar
82,467
< SR612
Installation Cost (poles,wiring, trenching)
$15K+/pole
Maintenance Cost
Total System Cost (1 C40 and 1 pole)
No maintenance required
<$30K
Table 3. SpotterRF C40 Equipment & Installation Costs Within its coverage area, the Compact Radar is able to determine the precise GPS coordinates of a moving person and collect such data as velocity, heading, angle, and range from the radar. These points are called tracks and are shown on as a crosshair box (magenta colored box in Figure 1 above) with a tail showing the history of the track.
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This precise track information is then sent to an integration platform, such Spotter’s NetworkedIO integration platform, that allows alerts and actions to be performed based on a set of rules defined by a user. The user can now create a software defined alert zone or geofence by simply pointing and clicking on a map in the user interface. Then set the actions to execute when a track is in the zone. These actions can include: 1) cue a PTZ camera onto the track and active track as long as the track is moving, 2) start recording high resolution data onsite, 3) send an email with a photograph to the security manager 4) Close a dry contact to trigger external devices such as active deterrents and 5) sound an audio alarm. With this advanced functionality, the transmission and viewing of data is done only when the radar picks up a target, cues the cameras, and relays an alert to security personnel. This dramatically reduces the amount of transmitted data, data storage costs as well as speeds response time by security personnel. With the accuracy of fourth generation radar technology, the Compact Radar is able to detect people, vehicles and animals with a very low level of false detections. In an eight week study conducted by Sensei, an energy security solution provider, of the 973 events detected by the Spotter, every single event was confirmed to be a person, animal or vehicle (See Sensei Report). Assuming a remote site that has little traffic in the areas being monitored you are now only looking at 1 to 5 minutes of video data per day or an email or two with photographs attached. That is a 99% reduction in the amount of video that must be stored, transmitted over a network, and analyzed. That reduction in video comes with a corresponding reduction in storage cost. Communications analysis costs are reduced from $110K per year to only $2,400/year.
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Figure 5. System Installation & Monitoring Costs with and without SpotterRF
Conclusion Using unassisted human video monitoring at remote sites for real time detection of security incidents is extremely costly and largely ineffective. Because of this, most remote sites have to use security guards which costs over $300K per year to have one security guard onsite 24/7. Even for sites that have high speed communications available, the installation and maintenance costs are quite high. Using Compact Radar to reduce the amount of video that needs to be transmitted, stored, and monitored can reduce Operating Costs by 98% and the Equipment and Installation Costs by 80% for a total reduction of 88% for installation and one year of monitoring costs.
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