Two South-East Queensland-based companies have come together to develop a turn-key environmental and security monitoring solution. Paul Skelton reports.

A new environmental and security monitoring system from the teams at Madison Technologies and CoastalCOMS is redefining how research networks, environmental agencies and city councils observe changes to the Australian coastline.

In fact, so successful is the system that it is now being sold as an integrated security system for commercial premises.

The solution incorporates the latest Madison hardware technology (the rapid deployment camera, or RDC) and CoastalCOMS’ core platform (a federated cloud solution), which are designed to be deployed anywhere in the world without the need for any fixed cabling infrastructure.

The solution incorporates real-time video streaming and storage saved locally or in the cloud – with secure viewing via a user’s computer, or smart device, such as a Samsung Galaxy tablet/phone, Apple iPhone or iPad.

Environmental monitoring consists of two main components – video recording and data sampling (water or air). The main benefit of the new system is that this data collection can be performed in real-time, remotely via 3G and continuously rather than single samples per day. CoastalCOMS’ core platform then fuses the collected data from the Madison RDC with other real-time data sampling and weather information to provide an overall view of the environment and its changing conditions.

“A camera is just another type of sensor, it’s just like what we use for water or air quality sampling,” CoastalCOMS founder and R&D manager Chris Lane says.

“We’ve been doing remote deployments for years, but in that time camera technology has dramatically improved. We decided to avoid building hardware and focus on our strength, which is the backend system.”

CoastalCOMS offers a hosted, managed service, delivering a total solution for video management and specialised video content analytics via public and private cloud architectures. Since 2009, the company has delivered Milestone Systems’ XProtect Corporate functionality to a growing list of government and private customers in Australia and the US.

“We’ve actually been using Madison’s camera technology for a while now, just in a bigger form factor, but the RDC made sense to us to include in our system,” Chris says.

“Now, once an RDC is installed remotely it automatically connects to the CoastalCOMS hosted cloud infrastructure and registers the product. It then appears in our hosted cloud video management system (VMS).

“We also run a digital asset management system that links to the VMS solution so we can archive and store video footage and sensor information, all of which is on a federated architecture.”

Chris explains that a federated architecture is where you can have multiple distributions of camera networks in a wide area network (WAN): “So, lots of cameras deployed anywhere in the world brought together in one system.”

“With a federated architecture you can have local, state, national or international control of your network. It’s like building a tree of cameras at different access levels.”

The RDC comes pre-configured to connect directly to the VMS. Further, it comes complete with integrated battery power supply and optional 3G and/or WiFi communications.

The RDC is also designed for use in areas where AC power is not available, or where camera monitoring is only temporarily required, and as such is designed to be installed quickly and easily without requiring any fixed cabling infrastructure. It is housed in an IP65-rated, stainless steel, lockable enclosure and can be mounted horizontally or on a pole.

In addition, optional integrated WiFi can be turned on/off remotely via a key fob, to conserve battery life when not in use, and enables footage to be periodically uploaded to any 802.11 WiFi-enabled devices.

Madison Technologies national key account manager Peter Reeve explains that the included 3G router makes it possible for the system to “create a day-today footprint of what has happened and will let you see in, say, 20 years how the shoreline or water quality has changed.”

“You’ll not only be able to look back at the sensor data, at changes in pH levels for example, but you’ll also be able to see the video footage from that time period,” he says.

“Better yet, the system is self sustainable in its own right. It doesn’t rely on a third party power connection; it can be powered by a solar panel and deployed anywhere in Australia. As long as we can get a communication signal to it, we can set one up to collect continuous real-time samples.”

While initially developed for coastal monitoring, the CoastalCOMS system isn’t exclusive to beaches.

“We are implementing our federated architecture systems increasingly more often into parks or cities. We have had a lot of enquiries from councils about creating a hybrid solution, and from surf life saving groups,” Chris says.

“This means, if you’re a person looking at installing a security system, you can simply take one of these cameras out of the box, switch it on and it will automatically appear in the hosted VMS solution. Practically, you could have one these systems completely setup and accessible through Milestone’s free iPhone app within 10 minutes.”

It’s important to note that if you plan on setting up one of the camera systems to solar power, you’ll need a qualified electrician to install the panel.

For water sampling, a probe needs to be run from the unit to the water.

Currently, CoastalCOMS is deployed in Orange County, Texas, Florida, Hawaii and San Diego in the US, and in most Australian states.

Locally, CoastalCOMS has been using the solution to perform environmental coastal monitoring and shoreline detection for the Gold Coast City Council where the Madison RDC continuously monitors the movement of sand on its pristine beaches.

The same hosted camera platform is also performing a vital surveillance job for the Queensland Fisheries Patrol by monitoring whales as they travel up the Gold Coast coastline for any entanglements. The CoastalCOMS solution also provides information to ecological research associations and are linked back to the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN).