Keeping Close Watch on Native Treasures

Nov 1, 2004 12:00 PM

The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the newest addition to a long list of museums operated by the Smithsonian Institution, has deployed a digital video surveillance system from PI Vision, Orlando, Fla.

The museum is a celebration of the cultures that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans in North America. It was opened on Sept. 21, 2004 in a ceremony involving representatives from the U.S. Congress and Native American tribes across America. The museum is located in the heart of Washington, within sight of the nation's Capitol.

The enterprise DVR/NVR solution supplied to the Smithsonian will be installed in all 15 of the Smithsonian's museums, with installations complete in about 12 sites to date. It was selected after months of testing by the Technical Security Division (TSD) of the Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations.

David Sousa, Smithsonian's supervisor of security administration, sought a surveillance system that could meet specific needs: “All of the equipment needed to be fully integrated and able to talk to one another,” he says.

The museum incorporates more than 400 multiple communication system outlets wired into the building, run from a central network communications center.

Sousa's requirements included the ability to configure a range of recording modes, thus giving the security staff scope to fine-tune the performance of the system and to achieve the optimum balance between quality and storage/bandwidth requirements.

The DVR system also enables secure access via network workstations to view live and recorded video remotely.

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