Infrastructure/facility surveillance
Description/Objective
This section considers Surveillance of public transport infrastructure and facilities other than the running way, stations, stops and vehicles (these are covered separately in other sections).
The relevant infrastructure and facilities include:
- Depots
- Parking areas
- Fuel facilities
- Maintenance areas and stores
- Operations and control centres
- IT and data facilities
- Communications facilities
Surveillance is required to detect any of the following at the facilities:
- Unauthorised entry
- Theft or attempted theft
- Unauthorised removal of assets or use of facilities by company personnel
- Attempted damage to property
- Attempts to sabotage or compromise the facilities or systems
- Loitering and other suspicious behaviour
This is essentially security surveillance of private property. It is normally performed by a combination of CCTV image acquisition, on-site presence, and close liaison with internal and external security personnel.
Cameras are usually private purchase and installation by the facility owner or by the transit authority or operator. The traffic system CCTV cannot be used for this type of private security surveillance.
The CCTV images are usually relayed to a security monitoring facility. This could be internal to the transit authority/operator, or contracted out to a security firm.
Technologies, data and resources
The main technologies used for at-station surveillance are:
- CCTVs, some with PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) or equivalent capability, others fixed
- Communications from the camera locations
- Communication to security and support units, and to external entities such as the police
- Viewing screens at the security centre
- Image and data storage and archiving
Advantages and Cautions
The primary advantages of Facility Surveillance are to:
- Provide continuous and comprehensive monitoring of transit infrastructure and facilities
- Enhance protection against theft, misappropriation and misuse of assets
- Enhance protection against wilful damage, sabotage and other attack on the facilities
- Record events for later review
- Gather presentable evidence for use in court
The principal cautions in relation to Facility surveillance are:
- Operatives need to be trained in what to observe
- Care needs to be taken to avoid CCTV operatives becoming passive observers of the images
- Continuity of evidence rules need to be understood, and compliant procedures established for capture, storage and handling of images and information. Failure to do so is likely to result in evidence being inadmissible in Court.
- Costs of maintaining CCTV systems can be high