Western Australia’s Public Transport Authority Enhances Public Safety

To provide safe, reliable and flexible transportation for more than two million people in the metropolitan area of Perth, Australia, the Public Transport Authority (PTA) has embraced a video surveillance data management approach powered by DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) storage to help safeguard the region’s rail, bus and ferry services.

As a public transport agency in Australia, PTA has deployed an integrated video surveillance and storage archive system with more than 3 PBs of DDN SFA storage, which can scale economically to 20 PBs of data to meet the performance and capacity requirements needed in these environments.

As the PTA increased its surveillance footage across thousands of cameras operating at higher resolutions, such as HD, the organization began to experience strain on its underlying storage systems used to support video surveillance efforts.

PTA solved the challenge by implementing centralized video surveillance and high-capacity DDN storage, which enables the organization to ingest footage from 1,800 live and recorded cameras. With real-time data from these cameras captured at a minimum of 24 frames/s and then archived for 31 days, PTA has moved beyond traditional post-event investigations and become more proactive in detecting and deterring potential criminal activity.

Consequently, the PTA’s ability to produce finely detailed video evidence of criminal behavior across 72 stations, 234 rail-cars, 32 facilities and several ferry services has supported a 97% rate of successful prosecutions. The robust CCTV and storage solution also is a cornerstone of PTA’s counter-terrorism approach because it enables the agency to monitor real-time activity and initiate rapid response to suspicious items or activities.

Additionally, PTA is taking advantage of its combined video surveillance and storage platform to combat the growing epidemic of graffiti vandalism, which costs Western Australia taxpayers $2.8 million each year.

Together, the solution plays a big part in helping PTA identify, arrest and prosecute graffiti vandals, reducing graffiti clean-up hours by more than 70% each year.

With CCTV coverage, resolution and retention of images, PTA will be able to incorporate safety and security applications, such as facial recognition and behavioral pattern and anomaly detection as those technologies develop. Since adding DDN storage, PTA has seen a reduction in frivolous complaints against transit officers by 70% in the past five years in part as a result of the agency’s ability to more quickly assess and review incident footage.