Genetec’s Omnicast To Safeguard German Water Supplier Against Threats And Contamination

Trollmühle, a water supply association selected Omnicast for its motion detection

Genetec, a pioneer in the physical security industry and a leading provider of world-class unified IP security solutions, announced that Trollmühle, a water supply association located in Rhineland, Germany, chose Omnicast, Genetec’s IP video surveillance system, to safeguard water facilities against threats and contamination. Omnicast was chosen for its highly-advanced reliability features, its motion detection and alarm management mechanisms, and its ease of use.

The water supply association selected SLK GmbH, a Genetec Certified Integrator located in Saarbrucken, Germany, to assist with the implementation of IP video surveillance system in their main pumping station in Windesheim. Omnicast manages Sony IP cameras situated at the main pumping station as well as at seven of the largest water supply tanks in the region of Trollmühle. The Genetec-Sony solution offers an easy-to-use platform with high quality images from which they can find information and make decisions quickly.

“The handling of the Genetec solution is comfortable and convenient. During investigations for example, retrieving information is very simple and the quality of the images is excellent,” Marcus Spira, head of the engineering department at Trollmühle water supply association.

When it came to reliability, not only did Omnicast guarantee the availability of all live and archived data with high-end failover and redundancy features, but high availability was also ensured with support for RAID storage technology. For added reliability and to optimize network bandwidth, Trollmühle also used Omnicast’s multistreaming feature to configure different video quality settings for live viewing or recording. Also, depending on the setting, a server will record all video from high-priority cameras and then only event-driven video from lower priority cameras.

Additionally, Trollmühle found by leveraging both Omnicast’s built-in motion detection and pre-programming event-alarms, operators were able to receive only critical alerts that suggested forceful entry so they could take immediate action. More so, system security features like configurable user-access privileges and authenticated user logins helped prevent unauthorized system access. Ease of upgrades was also key in making Omnicast their preferred video management system as Trollmühle can opt to scale their camera count or take advantage of more advanced features at their own pace, and without hassle.

Finally, since Omnicast is the video surveillance system of the Security Center, Genetec’s unified security platform, Trollmühle also has the ability to activate other components such as Synergis access control or pull in third-party business systems and manage them all from the unified platform. Instead of working from disparate systems, Trollmühle knows the unified platform will enhance operator workflows, reduce training costs and streamline operations.

“Counter-terrorism initiatives are taking precedence in governments through Germany and the world and amongst those is the protection of our water supplies,” said Gisa Heinemann, Regional Sales Manager for DACH, at Genetec. “We are proud to work with our forward-thinking distributor, SLK, to provide Trollmühle and other water supply associations with the tools to pro-actively prevent threats and contamination.”