365 days a year, the French metropolis Paris is heavily frequented by tourists, commuters from the surrounding area and business travellers from all over the world. This inevitably leads to an overload of public transport and urban roads, and also puts a heavy strain on the parking situation. For almost 35 years, one of the largest provider of parking places in Paris SAEMES – Société Anonyme d’Economie Mixte d’Exploitation du Stationnement – has been relieving the parking situation in the French capital’s city centre significantly.
Car parks with high-safety standard
With an increasing number of vehicles – annually more than 4 million customers use 79 car parks (22 of these are public and 57 are for residents), 6 park & ride spaces and a parking garage for buses – SAEMES is constantly occupied with the optimisation of their services.
The focus hereby lies on the avoidance of queues in front of the gates as well as on guaranteeing a high safety standard in the car parks. With the increasing number of parking spaces, the demands for the staff had increased as well and soon reached a limit. To assist their employees and to improve the situation, the management board decided to use a video system back in 2009. It had to be as intuitive and as easy to operate as possible in order to enable the desired short introduction period and subsequent smooth handling for the typically non-specialist staff.
Additionally, the administration of the image data from a central control station should be guaranteed. After numerous installer companies had presented their solution approaches, SAEMES decided in favour of the SeeTec software. Crucial for the decision of the French company was the reputation of the German software house: as market leader in the German speaking countries, SeeTec relies on a great wealth of practical experience in the field of video and security. Finally, the IP video management software convinced with its clearly arranged user interface that enables intuitive handling with regard to system design.
SeeTec IP video management software
Since no video solution had been applied before, the French SeeTec office was given free reign with regard to system design.
For the implementation of the central approach, only an entirely IP based video solution was possible. The core of the application consists of the SeeTec Multi Solution Platform, which implements the client’s demands down to the smallest detail.
The fully scalable and modular expandable solution is able to integrate additional cameras, I/O modules, features or applications from third party manufacturers at any time.
The result
To manage all the end customer’s locations in a centralised approach, only a distributed installation made sense. For this purpose, an administration server was installed in the headquarter’s control centre.
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| SeeTec Client's much clearer and more detailed display provides an obvious advantage over the usual PC screen |
An administrator, who is responsible for the configuration assigns user rights, views and centrally operates all systems. He connects, if necessary, to individual locations. In every car park between 20 and 40 cameras are recording. Their images are stored on a server on site and can be viewed by the security staff. For a clear visualisation of all subsidiaries, the team uses a large eyevis screen system at the control centre and is therefore able to keep an eye on all events. Due to the display agent functionality, the monitor wall with a total size of 7 sqm wall can be controlled by a conventional SeeTec Client. That way several alarms can be shown simultaneously on the 12 46‘‘- displays for example and can be processed from the operator station. The much clearer and more detailed display provides an obvious advantage over the usual PC screen. It enables a more precise analysis of the situation and allows an early intervention in case of incidents. In addition to the pure video management functionality of the system, SAEMES decided to apply the SeeTec License Plate Recognition at two test locations and linked it with a barrier management system by Eryma. When a vehicle enters the car park, the SeeTec LPR Module scans the license plate and compares it with the central license plate data base. If the driver provides additional authorisation by using a special ID card, the gate opens automatically.
SeeTec License Plate Recognition
Romain Lyon, Project Manager at SAEMES, draws the following conclusion after almost five years of having the SeeTec software in service:
“We began with an earlier version of SeeTec 5 and have constantly grown with the software. Of course we keep improving our activities with SeeTec to perfectly respond to our customer’s needs and are truly satisfied with this partnership.”
Numerous cases of vandalism have already been solved with the help of the video management system using recorded images that assisted the police in their investigative work.
Loitering of criminal gangs of youths all around the parking lots was reduced to the greatest extent possible.
For the future, an expansion of the video surveillance system is planned and further locations are to be equipped with the SeeTec software to optimise the situation of parking spaces in the city even further.
