How To Cover 1.4 Million Square Feet With Video Surveillance

By Mike Monocello, Business Solutions magazine

An integrator shares the details behind his 145-camera install for an upscale shopping mall.

Rob Merchant, president of MTS Intelligent Surveillance Solutions, recently completed an install for an upscale shopping mall in New Jersey. While you might not have customers that need to keep watch over a million plus square feet of space as Merchant had with this customer, the potential lessons learned by examining such installs make the story well worth reading.

After being featured in a newspaper article on another surveillance project that involved him, Merchant was approached by the mall. According to the integrator, “The mall was looking to create a new IP video surveillance solution to provide high percentage coverage and 100% coverage on critical areas.” He goes on to explain that other design objectives included a state of the art command console area, remote access to video, the ability for police to remotely access the video, the ability for digital zoom for forensic review, license plate recognition for parking lot egress points, and the ability to incorporate intelligent features as they become feasible and desirable (e.g. face capture or face recognition).