Site surveillance

Petrochemical sites are typically highly volatile environments, spread out over large areas. As such they may require many different operators to have access to the same closed-circuit television (CCTV) images. This demands a flexible and distributed CCTV system that delivers quality video at all times.

The analogue CCTV market has been dominant for a long time. Verified by consultancies such as IMS, traditional means of CCTV have been valued at US $7 billion per annum worldwide.

However, such analogue systems are set to convert over to network (IP) video over the next five to ten years – a significant market opportunity, particularly within the petrochemicals, oil and gas sectors.

Meeting surveillance needs

It is clear from the security challenges facing petrochemical sites that it is essential to have a CCTV surveillance system that can deliver high quality video images from cameras located over large geographic areas.

According to Oliver Vellacott, CEO of Indigo Vision, “the problem with analogue technologies is that they don’t scale, so the larger the system gets the more and more expensive it becomes to add each new camera. As well as that, they don’t span distances well at all – they can only go a few hundred metres.”

“You can go several kilometres with fibre transmission, but its still very limited in terms of the distance it can go, whereas if you move your system on to a network the concept of distance goes away completely.

In a refinery setting for example, covering an area of several square kilometres, an IP network doesn’t worry about the distance. So when you need to network together multiple platforms or refineries you can use that existing infrastructure to deploy your video system as well – the networks are becoming ubiquitous,” he added.

In addition to geographical coverage, the ability for multiple users to access the same footage from different locations, both locally and remotely, is a fundamental requirement, which traditional CCTV systems again didn’t allow for.

The combination of the video management software and the IP network creates a ‘virtual matrix’ that allows video from any camera or network video recorder (NVR) to be switched to any monitor or PC workstation, no matter where any component is located on the network.

“Once a video is on a network, anyone with the right access permission can see it, so instead of having one centralised control room (how traditional analogue CCTV is set up), the video is set up all around the organisation.

So, it’s not just used for security any more, operations can use it too, to optimise how the entire operation is run and anything that runs windows can access it, such as PDAs and laptops, for example,” said Vellacott.

This gives a petrochemical plant the flexibility to easily and cost-effectively integrate CCTV surveillance into its operations and establish off-site control rooms, or monitor multiple sites from one central point.

Video performance

As well as scalability, petrochemical plants also demand video quality and full frame rate live (‘realtime’) viewing. The ability to go back and view recorded footage is essential. IP Video systems are able to record high-resolution video continuously at 25/30 frames per second.

A petrochemical site is a high-motion, 24/7 operation; therefore, the surveillance system cannot hinder investigations that require intense video review, and this is where the analytics comes in.

Analytics is, “where the camera itself is monitoring what’s happening and alerts staff to what needs to be looked at. You can set up the camera to trigger when people walk over virtual trip wires, or if someone’s gone in to an area that they shouldn’t have gone in to,” said Vellacott.

Camera-based real-time analytics and tools for post-event analysis of recorded footage in the video management software allow operators to use the IP video system for a range of applications, such as security perimeter breeches, health and safety breeches, or operational effectiveness.
 

As Vellacott explains, “rigs are becoming more and more unmanned, so it’s helpful to be able to monitor offshore. In which case you could have an operator remotely monitoring just with video.

In addition, claiming that the IP system is more robust than traditional CCTV systems, Vellacott went on to say that, “with analogue, there is a centralised switch, so if it stops working the whole system goes – but with an Indigo Vision (network) system there’s no single point of failure – you can cut any single cable and the system doesn’t break down and keeps working, as we have redundant paths within the network.

Providing a redundant power supply, and redundant storage, for example, means that the whole system is resilient.

A good IP video system addresses this with robust hardware design of video encoders, NVRs and flexible system configurations. This provides fail-safe redundancy through means of back-up NVRs, and dual network connections providing zero-point failure systems.

Many IP video solutions can be fully integrated with other security systems such as access control and perimeter protection, consolidating all alarms within the video management software.

For example, when an attempted intrusion is detected at a perimeter fence, an alarm is triggered which displays a map on the IP video workstation. This shows the location of the intrusion and displays video from the nearest CCTV camera that automatically pans to view the incident.

The integrated security system can also be linked into other alarms – what IndigoVision call the software integration kit (SIK). “You can take it and connect it to SCADA alarms and access control systems.

What that means is that the events happening in the wider world act as book marks in the video as its stored so you can go back and search very, very fast to see who came through the doors and things like that,” said Vellacott.

“The access control integration is probably the most common, because video and access control can go hand in hand – people go through doors, gates etcetera, and you really want a seamless integration between all systems,” he added.

Refinery safety

Where the majority of petrochemical plants are still running analogue systems, with the introduction of the SIK, IP video systems can provide the necessary components to allow a staged upgrade to total IP.

Perhaps, more importantly, this approach also allows a ‘hot transition’, whereby the digital system is installed in parallel to the existing system and no camera feeds are lost while the system is commissioned and tested.

As Vellacott states, “health and safety is a huge issue on petrochemical sites, as is terrorism to a degree. As refineries tend to be close to shipping, immigration can also become an issue at times,” so a resilient, trustworthy security system is a necessity.

The petrochemical sector is growing fast and it’s an area where IPVideo brings particularly strong benefits. Just because of its geographical nature, it’s something that we’re very excited about.”