California School District Modernizes Surveillance System
i-PRO Co., Ltd. (formerly Panasonic Security), a provider of professional security solutions for surveillance and public safety, recently announced that the Murietta Valley Unified School District (MVUSD) in Riverside County, CA, has undertaken a project to modernize its first-generation surveillance system to new high-resolution i-PRO network cameras, and the i-PRO Video Insight video management system (VMS).
MVUSD serves 23,000 students and has nearly 4,000 employees. It comprises 11 elementary schools, four middle schools, three comprehensive high schools, two alternative high schools, one virtual, independent and homeschool academy and one adult transition school.
Following the establishment of a stakeholder team and development of a Prime Directive identifying the needs and expectations for a surveillance camera system, the District conducted extensive research and chose to standardize its security cameras system on i-PRO high-resolution network cameras and Video Insight VMS.
The MVUSD video security system is centralized, with a network operations center (NOC) at the district office and local monitoring at each school. Five servers move footage between the schools and the NOC. Additionally, MVUSD has established a collaboration with local police departments, which are able to connect to their camera system.
In choosing their next-generation cameras, Pratt and the team placed critical importance on high resolution to help them address key challenges such as fights, altercations, and vandalism. MVUSD Chief Technology Officer Jon Pratt explained, “Graffiti is a common example. It happens when no one is around, and usually, the camera is the only witness. If the footage is poor quality you can’t rely on it to stand by itself as evidence. Starting with high resolution cameras like i-PROs is one of the best decisions you can make.” He added, “Having more resolution, more information to use, is a universal utility, whether it’s humans interacting with footage, for analytics, or any future technology.”
While the district hasn’t yet deployed analytics in its camera system, Pratt notes that they’re investigating the Smart Search capability included in i-PRO’s Active Guard analytics plug-in to their Video Insight VMS, which enables real-time searches and deep forensic analysis of their surveillance video, and other use cases where analytics can provide insight into anomalies and alerts.