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Victorian transport gets smart about tech, crims
David Braue 06/03/2006
The opening last week of the National Intelligent
Transport Systems Centre in Port Melbourne has been a
labour of love for technology sponsor NEC Business
Solutions.
Bristling with electronics, the centre has combined more
than $2 million of systems and applications to develop a
cutting-edge multimedia and communications nerve centre
with tendrils stretching far across Victoria.
Live video and instrument monitoring feeds, brought in
via transport networks that link traffic cameras and
road monitoring equipment across the state, allow
operators to instantly monitor and optimize traffic flow
based on current conditions. The operations centre is
crammed with monitoring terminals, with three NEC GT5000
and GT6000 projectors - flown in from overseas at a cost
of over $30,000 each - casting floor-to-ceiling video
feeds across one wall of the room.
The centre is about more than just diagnosing traffic
snarls, however: as a cutting-edge technology centre, it
is intended as a centre of gravity where Australia's
previously fragmented ITS industry can unite to develop
and commercialize innovative transport related products.
It is also a technology showcase for NEC, which has made
the centre home to Australia's first implementation of
its SmartCatch real-time image processing software.
Designed by the boffins in NEC's Japanese R&D centre,
SmartCatch is built around four image analysis
algorithms that, when combined in various measures,
instantly analyses video images for suspicious
activities. Complex change detection algorithms can, for
example, notify operators if a person leaves a backpack
on a train platform or removes an item from the camera's
field of vision.
The system isn't limited to spotting lost bags; tuned to
the idiosyncrasies of human
movement, it can just as easily spot someone jumping
over a turnstile; a person
piggybacking another person to bypass a security door;
or someone walking backwards through one-way airport
security checks.
With resolution good enough to make out a pack of
cigarettes at 40 metres, SmartCatch could eventually be
linked with face scanning software to pick out persons
of interest as they pass security cameras - but this
capability hasn't yet been perfected or implemented.
With only 5 percent of surveillance footage typically
ever seen by human eyes,
SmartCatch will play a key role in helping NITSC
operators become more proactive in monitoring the
state's transport networks, says NEC business solutions
executive manager Milton Purcell: "It gives us the
ability to reach out to any networked camera that we can
touch via the Internet," he said. SmartCatch may be
headlining now, but the site will soon sport more
innovations.
Intended as a centre of excellence for Victoria's $16
billion transport, distribution and logistics (TDL)
industry, NITSC incorporates numerous secure development
bays, where inventors can quietly build and
commercialize transport-related applications combining
tools such as intelligent GPS and road hazard
navigation, RFID-based vehicle tagging, intelligent
container management, and distribution of live traffic
condition updates to motorists.
Behind the scenes is a sophisticated network linking a
broad range of NEC equipment -most notably, three racks
of NEC 5800 Express blade servers, each containing six
dual-CPU 3.6GHz Xeon servers running Microsoft Windows
Server 2003 with 4GB of RAM.
These are supported by 12 dual-CPU NEC 120LH stand-alone
servers, multiple terabytes of server-attached storage,
dedicated multimedia streaming technology from Perth
company PIVoD Technologies, and a range of video
archiving, duplication and distribution systems.
The gear isn't only for creative types, however: the
site, whose strong government backing was evident when
Victorian Treasurer and Minister for State and Regional
Development John Brumby addressed a capacity crowd at
its opening last week, also serves as a serviced office
and disaster recovery site for smaller, Victorian
government agencies.
There's a fibre-optic Gigabit Ethernet backbone with
100Mbps desktop connections throughout, nearly 100
SIP-compatible IP telephones and associated switching
gear, and incoming trunk lines from all across Victoria.
With an entire floor of the NITSC building available as
serviced office space, the site could potentially become
the operations centre for a government organization
displaced by a disaster. NEC's history in managing
Victorian government desktops, combined with the
integration of live links from the site into
departments' own data centres, would smooth the
transition from one site to another, with the ample
computing resources at NITSC providing necessary IT
support.
"Brought together, this is a hosted convergence model
that bridges across all of the existing disparate areas
of transport," Purcell said. "If the centre is
functioning in its third iteration as a contingency
disaster recovery site, they need user profile
portability from the government back into that site. The
only way that can happen is if they're part of our
hosted regime. By pulling back profiles [to the new
site] it will complete the portability loop for
government agencies."
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