User Case study on Intelligent Video for Public Surveillance

The Jaguar software solution from EVITECH is installed on the port of Lyon (Edouard HERRIOT, 2nd city of France), managed by the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, since June 2010. On this new video installation on the port, around 70 cameras (fixed and domes) have been installed by ERYMA Security Systems (Securidev) in February 2010, in order to reinforce the safety of this site with a surveillance of common public parts of the port : roads, railways, water entries.  Jaguar's missions consist in automating part of the management and security tasks, by the power of intelligent video analysis. Several detection & statistical applications have been deployed on Jaguar, based on multi-purpose camera images, for an automated video-security/safety/management :

  • the counting of vehicles per street and per hour, which demonstrated that around 5000 vehicles come and cross in the port every day, and allowed a sorting of vehicles per category (truck/car/ motorbikes).
  • These measures were checked by a manual crossed-counting period, which demonstrated the reliability of the sorting & counting function, with more than 80% successful "count+sort" events, which is estimated very satisfying by the end-user, mainly because the cameras that are used are not installed on dedicated counting spots, but on spots where they first cover other needs.  The counting/sorting errors are due to cars hidden behind trucks when passing in front of the camera, or cameras that are not high enough on the mast and "see" a car merged in the image with its follower, which sometimes results in a classification error.
  • the detection of over-speeding vehicles was requested from 25 km/h (15 m.p.h) over the legal limit, and this in order to first constitute statistics of high danger situations (it can be lowered in the future). This measure gave also information about roads and hours of such over-speed driving situations, in order to build slowing road bumps at specific places, instead of "everywhere". The speed measure was checked by registered trials and the corresponding Jaguar estimation was demonstrated reliable with a margin of less than 2 km/h (1.2 m.p.h).
  • video management also allowed to identify high traffic hours on the port and to optimize building hours as well as exceptional transports hours, for minimizing trouble to port users. It also allowed to highly improve links with boat drivers, in particular because a port commanding office based on video-surveillance and Jaguar allows to take care of incoming boats as soon as they arrive on site. This has allowed to optimize boat places management, and build high quality relationships between the port and its users.  It also improved the image of the port and the image of its managing company towards boat companies.
  • the detection of over-speeding vehicles was requested from 25 km/h (15 m.p.h) over the legal limit, and this in order to first constitute statistics of high danger situations (it can be lowered in the future). This measure gave also information about roads and hours of such over-speed driving situations, in order to build slowing road bumps at specific places, instead of "everywhere". The speed measure was checked by registered trials and the corresponding Jaguar estimation was demonstrated reliable with a margin of less than 2 km/h (1.2 m.p.h).
  • video management also allowed to identify high traffic hours on the port and to optimize building hours as well as exceptional transports hours, for minimizing trouble to port users. It also allowed to highly improve links with boat drivers, in particular because a port commanding office based on video-surveillance and Jaguar allows to take care of incoming boats as soon as they arrive on site. This has allowed to optimize boat places management, and build high quality relationships between the port and its users.  It also improved the image of the port and the image of its managing company towards boat companies.

The port selected Jaguar in particular because of the unlimited license mechanism which allows to implement as many applications as wished at no additive cost.

Like for any intelligent video application, a measure of false alarms was taken and demonstrated a very low false alarms rate (one every 2 hours), with some specific types (e. g. the departure of a vehicle which was parked for a long time on a forbidden area). These "false" alarms are sometimes useful, for example in this case for knowing the duration of these parkings and warn the drivers about the dangers of such stops.

The introduction of the thermal cameras technology on the water entrance of the port has produced a great satisfaction, image analysis allowing the detection of any floating object like a jet-ski, in order to guarantee detection of any entry at any hour (night, day), and by all weather (rain, snow, fog, sunshine towards the camera). There are few false alarms, limited to groups of small animals, and situations of change of water streams, with different temperatures.

In general, ERYMA succeeded the challenge of deploying the whole system within less than 15 days, which permitted to avoid vandalism, the system being quickly "self-surveilled" by crossed cameras. ERYMA also found solutions for installing a highly maintenable solution, without network electronic boxes. This improved highly the reliability, avoided vulnerable or wind-taking elements. The Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, authority for the Lyon Port, is here very satisfied of the reliability of the installation, with just one single camera (hit by a storm bolt) to replace within 6 months.

 

Compagnie Nationale du Rhône

1, Rue Chalon-sur-Saône

69367 LYON Cedex 07

Tel : +33 4 78 61 65 78

Site : http://www.cnr.tm.fr/