Axis Communications, Stone Security, and Milestone Systems build advanced public safety system to address campus challenges and more.
Safety and security at educational institutions is a complex topic in the United States these days as school violence become alarmingly more frequent while at the same time other crime statistics are improving. For Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), public safety has always been a priority, but providing that critical protection for students and faculty had become a challenge.
As Utah’s largest two-year college, SLCC serves more than 60,000 students across 11 campuses and offers technical and vocational certification programs. Before their upgrade, the school was at a crossroads with their security infrastructure. Their aging analog cameras had begun to fail, and the system management fees were skyrocketing. To address the problem, the school turned to the design expertise of system integrator Stone Security and the technology of Milestone Systems and Axis Communications. Together they were able to build an advanced public safety solution that would serve the school in several other unique ways too.
The team deployed 800 Axis IP cameras and a new video management system from Milestone Systems. By using multidirectional and modular cameras, campus security is now capturing nearly 1,600 different views that are streamed back to the school’s main data center using a single IP address.
The cost savings from replacing our old analog single-head cameras with Axis multidirectional and modular ones have been huge for us. We’ve nearly doubled our coverage while significantly reducing our camera count, cable pulls and software licensing fees, said Nathan Howard, Security Surveillance Manager.
In recognition of the project’s distinguished success, SLCC, Stone Security, Axis Communications, and Milestone Systems were awarded a Gold Globee in the “Best Deployments and Customer Success of the Year in USA” category in the 17th Annual 2022 Information Technology World Awards®. The award spotlights information technology and cyber security vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products, solutions, and services that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of technology and cyber security.
Not only does the new system greatly enhance public safety, but it has stopped grand larceny and petty thefts, helped proctors remotely monitor video feeds of testing centers, enabled teachers to observe the reactions of nursing students in simulated skills training, and assisted daycare workers address aggressive behavior and record parent drop offs and pickups.
The need for security monitoring will be amplified as the school adds housing to some of its campuses in the coming years. They feel they are well positioned to plan for their future needs with the infrastructure they have built and plan to add exterior cameras, audio communication for alerts, and analytics to detect things like suspicious loitering.