Background

The demand for parking in the urban and rural areas of Southern Taiwan is rising with continued economic development and urbanization. Without a capable surveillance system, public parking lots are susceptible to car dumping, littering, vandalism, and crime, becoming hot spots for law enforcement and a headache for the government.

Challenge

Local governments typically manage several parking lots within their jurisdictions. Therefore, a centrally managed surveillance network is needed to uphold the safety of public parking spaces. The system must include a fleet of vandal-proof cameras with sufficient IR capability, resolution, and field-of-view to monitor the darkest corners of parking lots. More importantly, the cameras must be connected to a central monitoring system capable of receiving incident notices and collecting evidence in real time to discourage misconduct and prevent disputes.

Solution

Together with its long-time partner, VIVOTEK designed the VAST 2 integrated parking lot surveillance system for public parking lots in southern Taiwan. The seamless integration of VIVOTEK’s professional surveillance equipment with its central management hardware and software effectively overcomes all management challenges in one go, streamlining the management process and providing safe and quality parking environments to the public.

The surveillance system was implemented total 150 cameras in 22 urban and rural parking lots across Southern Taiwan and linked to a central command center using VIVOTEK’s VAST 2 central management platform. The main cameras selected for this particular project were the IB9360-H bullet network camera and the FD9388-HTV outdoor dome network camera.

VIVOTEK’s IB9360-H camera is specifically designed for outdoor application. Equipped with a 2-megapixel sensor, this achieves a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30 fps. In large settings, such as parking lots, one camera can be installed to cover multiple lanes. The FD9388-HTV camera, on the other hand, has a 5-megapixel sensor, enabling a resolution of 2560x1920 at 20 fps. It also features VIVOTEK’s Supreme Night Visibility (SNV) and Wide Dynamic Range Pro (WDR Pro) technologies to achieve maximum visibility in low-lit or high-contrast environments. Both models deploy optical zoom lenses, which can be adjusted remotely using VAST 2 to fit different scenarios and effectively reduce the cost of on-site manual adjustments. Both cameras are also encased in robust IP66 and IK10 housing to withstand vandalism and the harshest environments, built-in IR illuminators with a 30 meter effective range to produce clear-cut images day and night, and VIVOTEK’s Smart Stream III technology to reduce bandwidth usage by up to 50% while maintaining optimum picture quality.

To meet the central management requirements of this project, the project control room was furnished with NR9682-v2 and ND9441P NVRs running VIVOTEK’s VAST 2 video management software. This setup allows for real-time management and surveillance of multiple locations. VAST 2 is jam-packed with features. The two most noticeable include VIVOTEK’s Cybersecurity Management Solution and Smart Search II. Cybersecurity Management Solution allows users to search and replay cyberattacks and Smart VCA events directly in Event Search and set relevant triggers in Alarm Management, while Smart Search II enables users to draw custom zones to search for specific individuals or objects or focus on any critical area. VAST 2 also supports scrolling thumbnails to maximize preview speed while minimizing error rate. The two technologies work seamlessly to make searches faster and more intelligent and eliminate the complexities and challenges of real-time surveillance.