Argentina’s Vicente López District Turns to Technology to Prevent Crime
Dedicated to preserving the security and well-being of its residents, especially with aArgentina’s Vicente López District Turns to Technology to Prevent Crime Dedicated to preserving the security and well-being of its residents, especially with a consistent increase in traffic, Vicente López faced the need to modernize, expand and unify its video surveillance and monitoring.
The Challenge of Disparate Systems:
The district wanted to unify the technological tools they used as part of a public security project, and to contribute to the community’s progress overall. The Centralized Solution: Milestone XProtect Professional Video Management Software, an open platform system that receives and distributes data from the municipality’s various security tools, ensures the delivery of information that helps the city officials make authoritative decisions. Dome and fixed cameras manufactured by Pelco, Bosch and Axis Communications are also used.
The Advantages of Efficiency:
The open platform allows analytical integrations that lead to improved crime prevention. In addition, authorities can identify and reduce citizens’ wait times in a variety of circumstances. The system is also adaptable and long-lasting, which guarantees its use in future governmental administrations and public policies.
Vicente López is one of the 135 districts that make up the Buenos Aires province. Stretching 33 km², it is home to about 300,000 people. In recent years, the flow of population that moves through the district has risen considerably. Thousands move through the region on their way to and from the federal capital on a daily basis, whether via personal or public transport (the area has three railways and a Metrobus, as well as the highway that more vehicles move through in the suburbs’ northern zone).
These demands, together with other phenomena, made it very necessary for the city’s video surveillance system to be modernized and expanded.
When a person or family has been the victim of a crime, what they long for most is a clear answer from authorities. With this and its residents’ peace in mind, the Argentine neighborhood developed a project dedicated to technological transformation.
At the end of 2011, after the introduction of new public security policies, the project to transform Vicente López into a more secure and intelligent city began. In addition to being able to capture criminal activity, the project’s main goal was, and continues to be, to reduce crime through preventative measures.
To give some background on the investment, Martín Gasulla, Deputy Secretary of Vincente López security, says he remembers the original CCTV system having only 60 cameras, not all of which functioned properly. “Today, we have 1,000 cameras in public channels and another 100 cameras connected in the local security guards’ and civil defense’s cell phones. In addition, we count on the Urban Monitoring Center, the heart of our video surveillance system, and ten local preventive detachments that rely on their own respective monitoring centers. This decentralizes security to key areas in the district,” said Gasulla.
The city benefits from a wide array of cameras made by Pelco, Bosch and Axis that range from PTZ to anti-vandalism, in both dome and fixed models.
Right now, Vicente López has different alarm systems, panic buttons, lights and even a digital dispatch console, whichares connected to police cell phones.
Unifying Technology
After such an emblematic investment, the project’s main challenge became finding a platform that supported all of these security systems.
The first step was to unify the three existing video management systems into one, “which worked until we reached a certain growth point, when we opted for a more robust solution,” explained Gustavo A. Vilches, director of Exanet S.A., the integrator company involved in the project.
Exanet chose Milestone XProtect Professional video management software (VMS) to manage the project’s demand for a growing number of cameras.
“One of this solution’s biggest advantages as an open platform is allows us to offer additional solutions to our clients,” the director of Exanet explained.
Vicente López’s system is connected by fiber optics: the cameras capture an image, the content moves through the network to the Urban Monitoring Center, which also includes a Data Center and storage servers. Normally, the protected information remains there for 30 days, unless there is a special petition by judicial authorities or police to use or view it.
Santiago Espeleta, Vicente López’s Secretary of Security, says that one of the biggest changes in daily operations “is being able to integrate other solutions like analytics technology, which has led to better results in terms of crime prevention and decision-making.”
According to the Secretary, one of the project’s other biggest challenges was being financed by public resources. “This is our residents’ money, and for this reason every decision was made very carefully. We couldn’t afford the luxury of making errors, so we searched for top-of-the-line providers, analyzed them and made a decision,” he affirmed.
The Advantages Continue According to district authorities, the objective between now and 2019 is to have a video surveillance system with 1,500 cameras that record in full HD, 365 days of the year.
On the integrating company’s side, Gustavo A. Vilches says they are studying the possibility of upgrading to Milestone XProtect Corporate VMS in the future to leverage its federated architecture.
Finally, Santiago Espeleta says that combining the human element with wellapplied, advanced technology is what guarantees the community’s well-being. “As a local government, we must work to ensure that people live better every day, and we can do so by employing trustworthy, high quality technology,” he concludes