Campus Security to Protect Occupants

A very popular university in Dover, Del. was founded more than two decades ago. It has campuses in both Wilmington and Georgetown. It offers more than sixty undergraduate degrees, eighteen graduate degrees and two doctoral curriculums to more than three thousand students each year. The highest level of students to apply in a fall semester was close to four thousand.

The state of affairs
Due to the fact that the university uses safety as a differential in recruiting students, it is the responsibility of the university's Police Department to maintain a safe environment for the campus population. The campus police found it needed a way to streamline its operations for effective and efficient operation to take place. The university's Chief of Police contacted systems integrator Advantech Inc. in Dover, Del., to recommend a solution to the problem. They nominated Honeywell as their chosen partner.

Upon utilizing Pro-Watch, every campus entity can manage its own building. Public safety administrators, acting as overall system administrators, have access to all locations to offer supervision for the whole facility.

According to the president of Advantech the major benefit of Honeywell and the most obvious features that they bring to the table, is the expert field support, software improvement support and incorporation support that allows them to partner with the university and provide an entirely significant adjustment.

The security company nominated Honeywell's Pro-Watch Security Management System, a multi-tiered client server architecture, as a multi-campus solution for incorporation of the university's building and vehicle fire alarm systems, CCTV, ID badging, intrusion detection, asset detection and access management. Each campus unit can supervise its own building upon utilizing Pro-Watch. The managers of public safety, acting as overall system supervisors, have access to all locations to supply supervision for the whole vicinity.

Moving on, Advantech joined hands with Honeywell Professional Services to incorporate Pro-Watch with DSU's student accounts/HR, dining and library systems as an attempt to streamline the registration process. At the present time, as soon as a student registers, a cardholder record is directly created within Pro-Watch and dormitory access privileges are given. After that, all what is required in order to complete the registration process is for the student to simply walk into the ID badging center where his picture is taken and signature is electronically registered. The student's ID card is printed and immediately encoded for meal plan and indoor market use, and is printed with the bar code of the library system in less than a minute.

Advantech, along with Honeywell, brought in Beacon Technologies to offer an incorporated mobile solution that leveraged the Pro-Watch system inn response to a need from public safety to offer its officers in the field with the capability to validate the status of students and also to authenticate if they are eligible for admittance to functions. Upon working as a team, they were successful in developing mobile handheld scanners that retain cardholder databases linked with Pro-Watch and also perform as machines to record tickets.

The university's security is literally armed with powerful data from close to two hundred cameras around the campus due to the incorporation of Honeywell cameras and digital video recorders into the Pro-Watch system. The ability to provide a verification window for the security officers represents a unique feature of the system. This feature also displays the badge data and live video of the actions. For instance, when someone utilizes the card reader at the point of entry, the badge photo comes up on a monitor at the dispatch site, as well as live video footage of the occurrence. Through using this data, the security officer can authenticate that the person entering the door is the same person displayed on the identification card.

Realizing the Numerous Advantages

The university continuously saves thousands of hours per year in data entry and wasted time through its incorporation of the Pro-Watch system with the student accounts.

According to an administrator of the school, the cardholder record only has to be entered once instead of running multiple independent systems. This does not only save valuable time, but it also significantly increases precision due to the fact that it ensures the cardholder's record is identical throughout the entire security network.

And let's not forget to mention that the integration also provides an increased level of security. As soon as an entry is made in the student account/HR system, that person's access rights can be immediately deleted within Pro-Watch such as when a student is expelled or a staff member leaves the job for good.

Another school manager pointed out that at one time, a cancellation was dependent on a manager recollection to inform public safety to cancel the individual's access privileges. If it was forgotten, then that person could have admission privileges for the foreseeable future.

In addition to that, the handheld scanners also assist in saving time in the vicinity. As an example, when there is a function at the campus, public safety can rapidly deploy admission points anyplace on the perimeter of an event and quickly grant admission to students with the expected qualification. These electronic readers also save the university the expenses of distributing paper admission tickets and printing them. Adding to that, the ticket writing function enables officers to issue a ticket at a rapid pace.

A university official also said that in the past, it could take an officer close to twenty minutes to manually record the data, take note of the violation and finally give the statement. Fortunately, the officers now only have to scan the ID, check the breach and location on the mobile ticker writers, and it prints out the statement. The ability to generate and print out the tickets in a matter of minutes allows the officers to return to more important aspects of their job.

Campus police were able to make several arrests of students who were caught breaking into the residence halls upon installing the video surveillance devices throughout the campus.

A security official at the campus expressed delight over the fact that they were able to capture the various occurrences on video and generate a CD of it. "The video was clear enough to the extent that his officers were able to identify them right away especially because they knew most of the students on campus. They were able to make an arrest only within hours and were able to present and share the video with parents during various orientation sessions to demonstrate how they were carrying out a remarkable job in protecting their loved ones.

Having these security devices on campus has really made a significant difference in the security standards of the university as a whole. Not only are the students protected but all the workers, staff, officials, administrators, police officers as well as the general property of the university.

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