Cameras and intercom improve student safety
A Melbourne school has rolled out digital infrastructure, including network cameras and intercoms, to better fulfil its duty of care to students.
Ivanhoe Grammar School has implemented expansive visual coverage enabled by Axis panoramic network cameras, providing access control and active incident detection and deterrence throughout the school’s public spaces.
The network can also capture the full breadth of the school’s new Sports and Aquatic Centre’s pool environment, ensuring student safety.
“Just having the cameras and the intercom system is a proactive approach to campus security for staff, students and visitors,” said Winston Mattson, Director, Systems and Infrastructure, Ivanhoe Grammar School.
“I guess it’s about maintaining the campus security, keeping the campus locked down as practicably as possible and using this technology to help us with those goals.”
In June 2022, Ivanhoe Grammar School officially opened its dedicated sports and aquatic centre, a six-level structure incorporating a range of facilities, including a 50 m, eight-lane swimming pool; four basketball and netball courts; and two rooftop tennis courts.
As the largest capital works project the school has ever undertaken, it was imperative that the new centre was equipped with the right technology to ensure the safety and security of those using it.
Already claiming a long partnership with Axis Communications to provide safety and security to its existing buildings and campuses, it was a natural progression for Ivanhoe Grammar School to deploy a range of Axis network cameras and intercoms throughout the centre to deliver the visibility and incident detection functionality needed to manage student, staff and visitor safety at the new site, expanding its total three-campus fleet of Axis Communications network cameras to more than 290.
“Axis has got a vast range of models, and that really helps us with any particular scenario or requirement where we can go to that catalogue of cameras and pick out the best camera to suit the environment,” Mattson said.
Thanks to the 180-degree visual coverage enabled by devices such as the AXIS P3807-PVE and P3818-PVE panoramic network cameras, Ivanhoe Grammar School has been able to capture the full breadth of the Sports and Aquatic Centre’s pool environment with just a couple of units and still gain comprehensive coverage of the entire space. Likewise, the school has been able to obtain full visibility of its sports fields thanks to the field of view provided by Axis’s panoramic cameras.
According to Mattson, the Axis network camera fleet easily integrates with Ivanhoe Grammar School’s Milestone Systems video management platform and video analytics software from Icetana to identify unusual changes in behavioural patterns, flagging potential incidents captured with the Axis camera network.
This capability gives the school the ability to identify and respond to potential incidents in real time, rather than waiting until after an incident occurs before finding the appropriate footage to review for incident investigation.
With the latest addition to its Axis camera fleet and ongoing upgrades across all three campuses, Ivanhoe Grammar School can now claim coverage of all entry and exit points, as a minimum. Additionally, the school can also gain greater visual coverage of more open spaces, such as basketball courts and sports grounds with fewer cameras than was previously possible, thanks to Axis’s panoramic network camera range. Today, spaces that are 100 m or more in width can be adequately covered by a single camera.
The cybersecurity features built into Axis’s network camera technology mean the school can also maintain students’ privacy to a high level. As an educational institution, Ivanhoe Grammar School has a duty of care to protect students’ privacy as well as their safety and security.
“We take the privacy of our cameras very seriously, and we restrict who can look at the footage,” Mattson said.
“Not just anybody can come through to look at the footage. It’s got to go through a process. And, of course, if we need to use the footage or have to hold onto it for evidence purposes for the police, for example, only authorised people can request the footage, because we’ve got to maintain privacy.”
Moreover, with cybersecurity features to counter different types of cyber attacks, effectively battle vulnerabilities and prevent unauthorised access to internal systems built into Axis network cameras, Ivanhoe Grammar School can better protect its data and establish internal processes to keep sensitive information safe and secure.
