Northshore Utility District located in King County, WA recently installed 38 cameras, some of them high-definition and some standard-definition, at the utility's main headquarters and at five remote pumping stations in an overhaul of its video security system.

The district's information systems and technology director Stephen Schommer says the upgrade was necessary, citing a number of occasions when the old, analog surveillance system caught perpetrators close up, but could not produce a clear picture for identification.

The new equipment was supplied by IndigoVision and installed by Reliable Security Sound and Data. One of the remote cameras at a pumping station is five miles from the utility's headquarters. The security management software package provided by IndigoVision, called Control Center, allows operators to view live and recorded video from any camera. The video is recorded onto network video recorders.

IndigoVision says its distributed architecture allows any camera, workstation or NVR to be located anywhere on the network. Video from any site is recorded; live and recorded video from the remote sites can be accessed over a standard link from the main site.

The Northshore Utility District covers more than 17 square miles and serves more than 65,000 people.

Reliable Security Sound & Data president Bill Miller says that what's even more impressive than the system's high-quality video is the fact that the HD cameras use low bit rates, between 1 and 2.5 Mbits/sec. Indigovision credits its compression technology with this achievement.