Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)

Our ROMANSE control rooms utlise a network of Closed Circuit Television Cameras to monitor routes in both Hampshire County and the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton.

Many of the Motorway and Trunk Road cameras have been introduced in collaboration with the Highways Agency. Video images are captured using the latest cameras and transmitted via Fibre Optic cable or ISDN (high speed telephone link) back to our Control Rooms, located in Southampton (for Southampton City monitoring), Portsmouth (for Portsmouth City monitoring) and Winchester (for Hampshire County monitoring).

Our operators have the ability to manipulate (pan and tilt) the direction of the majority of cameras in real time in order to track traffic flow; a feature particularly useful during peak hours. They are also fitted with zoom functionality which allows many roads - near and far - to be monitored by the same camera.

When required, we can support the emergency services with incident handling by providing video feeds to the Hampshire police control room, although our systems are primarily used for traffic monitoring not law enforcement.

To obtain a broad view of traffic and travel events, control room operatives have access to live video feeds from other District and Borough Council systems. This allows them to build up as big a picture of the state of the road network as possible.

On our ROMANSE online website it is possible to view snapshots of many ofthe CCTV traffic cameras allowing travellers to check the status of roads usually before departing on thier journeys. The snapshots are updated every 5 minutes and are only available during operational hours. Pictures are also removed from the website if a camera is being manipulated for operation purposes.

The Future
CCTV cameras are our only current means of receiving precise visual information relating to the Hampshire, Southampton and Portsmouth road networks and no other technology looks likely to replace them for many years yet. Control rooms receive a steadily increasing number of images and continuing rollouts by the Highways Agency and local authorities look set to increase our use of the technology.

This increase will inevitably lead to the need for some sort of automatic system monitoring utility that processes imagery in real time.

Furthermore, Intenet-based communication mediums such as ADSL are fast becoming the standard for retrieving camera imagery.