Campus Safety
U Kentucky Installs New Video Management System
The University of Kentucky recently announced a partnership to deploy a new video management system from Salient Systems. The system, CompleteView VMS, ties together more than 3,000 cameras across multiple campuses to improve situational awareness and video monitoring around campus, according to a news announcement.
"With Salient, we have moved into a more flexible and scalable software-based environment for video storage," said Nathan Brown, deputy chief of the University of Kentucky Police Department (UKPD). "This more virtualized environment has allowed us to no longer be so physically reliant on hardware, which requires a lot of upkeep. Now, we can pivot by increasing or decreasing storage without manipulating the entire system as a whole."
The university has more than 30,000 students, 15,000 employees, 18 residence halls, three medical centers and two sports facilities. The centralization simplifies the ability of university police to monitor everything from sporting events to move-in day. The campus's two large video walls, one at the UKPD Emergency Operations Center and the other at Kroger Field, allow dispatchers to view the feeds of all associated cameras simultaneously. It also offers features like Dynamic Resolution Scaling — which scales video resolution at the server level to match the client, be it a desktop computer, web client or mobile device. The software also helps the university expand its reach of cameras at off-campus and satellite locations with minimal hardware installations or bandwidth issues. The software-focused approach allows for significant cost savings in hardware, system maintenance and upkeep.
"Large organizations such as the University of Kentucky demand a high degree of scale, flexibility, and power from their video management systems," said Sanjay Challa, chief product officer of Salient Systems. "CompleteView is engineered from the ground up to meet those fundamental needs, as well as easily adapt to future needs, as the business of the organization continues to evolve."
