Cloud could help Anglian Water beat metal theft

London – Metal theft is costing the UK economy more than £770 million every year as thieves target the transport system, utility companies and public buildings such as schools, hospitals and churches.

One solution to the problem, though, is under consideration at Anglian Water, whose sites have been targets for theft, trespass and vandalism, which can put site safety and entire services at risk.

Following a three-month trial at its waste water treatment works in Northamptonshire, the utility is considering the use Jabbakam’s cloud-based IP camera surveillance system at further sites located across the country.

Anglian Water’s objective in deploying the Jabbakam system is to reduce such incidents, as well as increasing general security for their staff. If and when an incident occurs, it could use the Jabbakam video evidence, made available immediately from the Internet, to pursue the perpetrators.

A challenge to using IP video surveillance in remote locations is economically connecting to the Internet.

Anglian Water has resolved this issue by connecting to Jabbakam’s web-based video surveillance system via the Hughes IPoS network, and Anglian Water’s use of the Hughes IPoS network to connect its Northamptonshire sites to the Jabbakam IP video surveillance network via the Internet is a commercial first.

Conventional CCTV systems are often stolen or vandalised by the criminals, meaning the video evidence is destroyed or stolen. In the case of Jabbakam, all video data is immediately transmitted off-site, via the Internet, and therefore can’t be destroyed or physically removed from the site.

Previously, a satellite link to the internet would have been uneconomic to deploy and uneconomic to use for remote surveillance purposes. However, the Jabbakam system makes this possible because it is designed to operate in bandwidth-deprived environments.

The operation of conventional CCTV systems depends on the continual streaming and monitoring of video footage. This makes connecting them to satellite systems technically challenging, expensive and uneconomic for the protection of all but, the most sensitive of sites (military installations etc).

With Jabbakam, video footage is recorded on an exception basis (usually triggered by movement or another user-defined event). The size of the data output is miniscule compared to conventional CCTV systems.

Jabbakam now allows those organisations, that want to protect remote locations vulnerable to theft, vandalism and trespass and that have no current means to connect to the Internet, to do so both effectively and economically, by creating their own Jabbakam IP camera surveillance networks.

“We chose to pilot Jabbakam at these remote locations because if it worked there it would work anywhere. This pilot has shown us that Jabbakam can work well in such locations thanks to the use of satellite,” said Lynda Chamberlain, Anglian Water’s security manager.

The system provides immediate access to footage via one click connectivity and it is competitively priced. The system’s low power requirements mean it will also be possible to use solar panels at those remote sites that have no access to mains power.

Whenever an event occurs on-site, Jabbakam alerts the relevant manager that something is going on via email or text message with an image and a link to a video attached. Depending on the content of the video the manager is then able to take appropriate action.”