CCTV Best Practice Guidance
Australian Customs Service
BACKGROUND
More than 20 Million international air passengers arrive and depart Australia each year through international airports. To help meet the challenge of monitoring such a large number of people, the Australian Customs service has a CCTV network covering all areas of their airports. CCTV is used by customs to: detect unlawful activity that presents a threat to the border, respond to illegal activities and to collect evidential material to assist in prosecution.
As part of the Government's response to the 2005 Wheeler review of Australian Aviation Security, the Australian Customs service were selected to take a lead role in the long term expansion and upgrade programme for the nations Airport CCTV systems.
PROJECT
The Australian Customs Service wanted to ensure that they appropriately addressed the human element of their CCTV systems, therefore they requested CCD to provide best practice guidance and HF advice on CCTV monitoring and control centre development and design.
IMPLEMENTATION
CCD consultants visited Australian Customs Service CCTV control centres observing and analysing operator tasks, workflow and communication links. Management vision and operator views were collected as well as a detailed equipment and systems inventory.
CCD provided the Australian Customs Service with two documents; the first provided Human Factors guidelines for best practice CCTV control centre design and operation. The second document sat alongside the guidelines, providing detailed results and analysis of the existing control room reviews. It also presented conceptual designs to illustrate how the control rooms could be developed and designed to comply with best practice guidelines.
OUTCOMES
The Australian Customs Service endorsed the deliverables stating "CCD set the standard for our Agency providing invaluable guidance". They intend to use the CCD guideline document to develop their future direction for their CCTV modernisation programme.
Pictures courtesy Australian Customs and Border Protection Service