Amid last week’s political conventions and massive campaign rallies, wireless video surveillance has emerged as an indispensable tool for law enforcement and public safety agencies throughout the country. Orlando Police Department, Denver Police Department and St. Paul Police Department, among others, used wireless mesh technology to meet complex challenges of ensuring security and preventing incidents when election passions run high.

In battleground Florida, campaign events took place almost daily. On Oct. 21, the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton rally in Orlando drew a record crowd of 60,000 people. "Wireless surveillance provides an extra set of eyes, greatly improving situational awareness and officer safety," said Agent Blye with Electronic Surveillance Support Team at OrlandoPoliceDepartment. "We can respond to incidents captured on camera within seconds from the on-site mobile command center. Both the installation and the event itself went without a hitch, but if anything should have happened we would also have had courtroom-quality video for incident review and to back up any arrests."

Wireless systems can be positioned almost anywhere to obtain the best point of view -- no need to drill holes, pull cable or trench ground. For temporary installations, cabled systems are not even an option, and time is critical. The cameras can also be repositioned as conditions change. On a wireless mesh network, unlike with a point-to-multipoint system, any mesh node can act as a "head end" -- allowing multiple command centers to be set up, at any point on the network. Integrated systems, further simplify setup.

"What sets wireless mesh apart is the ease of deployment," added Blye. "For example, we can set up a wireless surveillance network of eight cameras within 12 hours. In addition to deploying the police department's network, we can use mesh nodes to tie into any existing surveillance system -- such as at a stadium, school or bank -- and bring video feeds back to our command center. This is an extremely robust system that works for our needs at various events, from hostage situations to county fairs and political rallies."

In addition to streaming video to the mobile command center, the solution allows for video to be viewed from mobile devices and also allows for integration with other security systems like access control, sensors including gunshot detection, voice and data communications. When situation requires cooperation of multiple local, state and federal agencies, such as during the political conventions due to their designation as National Special Security Events, video can be sent in multicast mode to multiple destinations for simultaneous viewing and recording -- to police headquarters, field command centers and joint operations centers. Multicasting is essential for remote monitoring by multiple decision makers, but can severely burden a wireless network.


Wardy Landrau
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