Although the Barcelona Metro (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona, TMB) surveillance system has on occasion helped police to catch an organized group of thieves, crime was not the reason TMB started installing cameras twelve years ago. With over one million people traversing the city each day on TMB trains, with stops at more than 100 stations, Barcelona’s Metro authorities needed to make sure that things were running smoothly and safely and that commuters could get where they needed to go.
The first phase of the project entailed installing an analog CCTV system throughout twenty metro stations. Each station contained eight cameras and a small compartment for an operator, who viewed the live streams locally on two monitors. The footage of each camera was recorded twenty-four hours per day and saved on a digital video recorder (DVR) for a period of three or four days.
