Next Gen Technology
Event-based security solutions for a new scholastic generation
- By Steve Birkmeier
- November 01, 2016
FOUNDED IN 1887 IN BUIES CREEK,
N.C., CAMPBELL UNIVERSITY OFFERS
STUDENTS ALL OF THE AMENITIES
OF A TYPICAL LARGE-SCALE COLLEGE
CAMPUS WHILE PROVIDING
THE FEEL OF A CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY.
WITH AN ENROLLMENT OF
MORE THAN 6,000 STUDENTS,
INCLUDING 4,000 UNDERGRADUATE
AND GRADUATE STUDENTS ON ITS
MAIN CAMPUS, THE PRIVATE UNIVERSITY
OFFERS COURSES IN NEARLY
100 DISCIPLINES AND ALSO
BOASTS ITS OWN MEDICAL AND
LAW SCHOOLS. LATER THIS YEAR,
CAMPBELL WILL LAUNCH ITS NEW
SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, WHICH
WILL PROVIDE STUDENTS WITH
MORE OPTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM
IN FURTHERING THEIR ACADEMIC
CAREER.
This will be the third new school to open
at Campbell in less than five years following
the opening of the Jerry M. Wallace School
of Osteopathic Medicine in 2013 and the
establishment of the Catherine W. Wood
School of Nursing in March 2015. Concurrent
with the establishment of the nursing
school last March, the university broke
ground on a 72,000-square-foot building
that is expected to house the nursing school,
as well as Campbell’s physical therapy, occupational
therapy and medical research programs.
Campbell is also working in conjunction
with the state of North Carolina to erect
a new pedestrian tunnel under U.S. 421 to
connect its campuses.
To ensure the safety of students and faculty
members in these new facilities, Campbell
decided to significantly upgrade its video surveillance
system beginning with its Fine Arts
building. The job of updating Campbell’s surveillance
hardware and software fell to Charlie
Price, the university’s audio/visual manager,
and the rest of his team that oversees the
installation of physical security systems
across the campus.
“There is very little crime here and we want
to keep it that way,” Price said. “We feel like
one of the best ways to ensure our parents
that we’re keeping the environment healthy
here is to provide surveillance.”
According to Price, the university currently
has approximately 150 cameras deployed
across campus, which are a mix of both analog
and IP technology. For years, Campbell relied
strictly upon analog solutions for its surveillance
needs but with the advancements made
in image quality and the costs to deploy network
cameras decreasing, the university
decided to make the migration to IP for all of
its future projects.
Although it leveraged some standalone
video recorders in the past, Price said they
had their limitations and knew for the initial
run of this upgrade, which included the
installation of 20 cameras in the Fine Arts
building and about 30 cameras altogether, the
university needed a more robust system that
could help security officials bridge the gap.
“We tried some standalone units that
worked really well,” Price said. “But you’re
limited to 16 channels on most of them and
we were searching for a solution that would
deliver more than your average, standalone IP
video recorder.”
As opposed to many college campuses
which opt to install one large server and then
tie all of the cameras into it, creating a single
point of failure, Price wanted a distributed
network setup and leverage individual servers
that could be viewed from a single desktop.
Additionally, the audio/video team wanted its
surveillance system to be separate from the
rest of the university’s IT backbone.
“That not only takes a load off of our computing
people, but it also ensures great reliability
per building,” Price said. “We can just sit at
our desktop, pull up a certain server from an
individual building and view the cameras.”
After consulting with a representative from
Accu-Tech—the distribution partner Campbell
collaborated with on the project—and
trying out several different brands, Price said
they opted to go with Arteco’s eMotion software
as it offered everything they were looking
for in a VMS platform. Price said he was
extremely impressed with the user-intuitiveness
of eMotion, as well as the company’s
technical support, which he described as second
to none.
With a small staff with myriad responsibilities
across the campus, Price said manpower
resources are stretched to the max, but
he knew eMotion could help support the university’s
current and future surveillance infrastructure
with relative ease.
“Security is one-eighth of what we do and
we don’t have a lot of time to dabble with it, so
we’re happy when we hook up something and
it works,” said Price. “Arteco provides great
technical support and they are always right
there to answer any question we may have.”
Price said he was comfortable knowing
that eMotion would always be up and running
in the background so that in the event an
incident does occur on campus, they will be
able to retrieve the evidence they need quickly
and reliably.
“Nothing is more disheartening than to
have an incident, go through your video and
find there is nothing there,” Price said. “Reliability
is key for us.”
With the installation in the Fine Arts building
still ongoing and the upcoming projects at the aforementioned tunnel and School of Nursing set to get underway
soon, Price said the university decided to standardize all of its surveillance
technology on Arteco and will ensure all of the future hardware
purchases are certified on the platform. However, because Arteco’s software
conforms to ONVIF standards, the university will not find itself
pigeon-holed into using one particular type of camera. In addition,
while Price and his team used an off-the-shelf server in their initial
deployment with eMotion, he said they are planning to use Arteco
video servers for future projects.
“I think this is going to be powerful software
for us. It can do far more than we need it to do
right now; but in the future, there is so much
more we can do with it,” Price said.
This article originally appeared in the November 2016 issue of Campus Security Today.