With restaurants, bars, attractions and retail outlets, Mermaid Quay welcomes millions of visitors every year. The new multi-storey car park, providing more than 300 additional parking spaces, was developed to support the growth and ongoing regeneration of the Cardiff Bay area.
Given the high daily flow of vehicles and pedestrians expected within the multi-storey car park, Cardiff Council required a reliable video surveillance solution capable of providing comprehensive coverage throughout the facility and contributing to the safety of visitors, retail operators and staff.
Innovative Fire & Security and GOLDBECK Construction selected Comelit to supply the video surveillance system, while Innovative Fire & Security was responsible for its design, coordination and installation. The solution supports the day-to-day supervision of the car park, enabling operators to monitor entrances, transit areas and key sensitive points, as well as quickly retrieve recorded footage whenever required.
118 Next cameras to monitor entrances, routes and sensitive areas
The system includes 118 cameras from the Next range, distributed across the different levels of the car park and installed at vehicle and pedestrian entrances, stairwells, payment areas and other strategic points throughout the facility. The variety of solutions available within the Next range made it possible to adapt coverage to the different viewing conditions found across the car park, while maintaining a consistent and easy-to-manage system.
The distribution of the cameras provides operators with a comprehensive view of vehicle and pedestrian movements, supporting the monitoring of areas with the highest levels of access and transit.
A 128-channel Advance NVR for centralised system management
The system is managed through a 128-channel Advance NVR, sized to centralise the car park’s 118 video streams within a single platform. The recorder supports up to 128 IP channels, resolutions of up to 16 MP and bandwidth of up to 768 Mbps. H.265/H.265+ compression technologies also help optimise network usage and the storage space required for recordings. The NVR provides the tools needed to organise, review and quickly retrieve recorded footage, simplifying day-to-day supervision activities. The configuration adopted at Mermaid Quay therefore makes it possible to centrally manage a large number of video streams, while still leaving capacity for any future expansion of the system.
Video analytics to support monitoring
The Next Series also provides video analytics features based on deep learning algorithms, which, depending on the system configuration, can be used to distinguish between people and vehicles and identify relevant events more quickly.
Features such as line crossing and area intrusion can support the monitoring of entrances, routes and restricted areas, highlighting events that require verification by operators.
In a multi-storey car park, these functions provide an additional tool to support monitoring activities, making it easier to identify movements or crossings that require closer attention.
Faster searches through recorded footage using metadata
Metadata-based search functions allow operators to narrow down recorded footage using criteria related to detected people or vehicles.
This enables operators to identify relevant sequences more quickly, reducing the time required to manually review large volumes of footage.
Video surveillance therefore becomes not only a tool for real-time monitoring, but also a practical resource for post-event investigation, which is particularly valuable in a facility characterised by numerous access points and a high flow of vehicles and pedestrians.
The project, in the words of our partners:
Josh Stowell, Project Manager di GOLDBECK Construction
Steve Jones, Managing Director at Innovative Fire & Security