Major US City Satisfied With 20% Continuously Broken Cameras
By IPVM Team, Published Jul 20, 2016, 08:37am EDTIs 20% continuously broken cameras reasonable?
Yes, it is, according to one major US city.
In this note, we examine the city, the challenges involved, and what is reasonable for broken cameras.
City Overview
A Dallas, TX city wide video surveillance system has received scrutiny [link no longer available] following the brutal murder of 5 police officers. There have been problems getting video from the city's system (both in terms of quality images and sheer availability of any recordings).
80% Working
Dallas was straightforward about what was working and what was not:
80 percent of the 400 or so cameras scattered throughout the city -- cameras on which the city has spent millions in recent years -- are functioning properly.
With the chairman of Downtown Dallas, a group who contributed to paying for the system declaring:
Because of technology and manpower, you're never going to have 100 percent up at all times. Eighty percent is reasonable.
Old Milestone Mixed With OnSSI
An image from the control center shows that they use a mix of many years old Milestone and OnSSI:
For a major city to use such an old version, it is a signal that they either lack the money or organization to keep things up-to-date.
[Update: as a member mentions, this may be old OnSSI OEMed from Milestone, next to newer OnSSI, equally if not more dysfunctional.]
Firetide Failing
One other factor that likely contributes is Firetide mesh wireless. Back in Firetide's / mesh wireless 'glory days', this was considered innovation. But various reports of Firetide reliability problems in Dallas and Firetide's future slide into irrelevance changed that.
20% Not Working - Not Surprising But Not Acceptable
While we do not know all the specifics to comment on Dallas particularly, there are some factors that make this situation not surprising:
- Overly ambitious system - especially using mesh wireless, which has caused reliability issues in many cities
- Dated system - while Dallas was cutting edge 5 - 10 years ago when deployed, it is far from what systems can do today
- Lack of upgrades - especially with city systems, money needs to be spent to keep the system upgraded and maintained or high failure rates are inevitable
One key underlying theme is that many cities get money to build a system (and in the past decade often from government grants) but then struggle to find the money to maintain, upgrade and refresh to keep it functional.
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Comments (24)
Couldn't that "old Milestone" actually be OnSSI NetDVMS running?
On another note, what is reasonable for a percentage of cameras not functioning in that environment?--mainly outdoor.
3-5%??
I said up to 10%, but only because I think 1% is a really high bar. To me, I think it should be somewhere in between 1% and 5%, which leads me to voting up to 10%.

Maximum 5% down at any one time I think would be a more easier value to swallow assuming you put at least 95% effort into the maintenance and upkeep into the day-to-day care and feeding. If you are prepared to invest that amount of capital you need to UP FRONT also explain and get agreement IN WRITING from both management and unions to keep it running at those levels.
What is the annual maintenance cost of a city network with 400 cameras?
The goal should be 0% down or you shouldn't have put the cameras up in the first place. Things happen but you can get to 99%+ if you plan and resource monitoring, problem resolution and replacement costs.
If a camera is offline for a long period, it is because there aren't any perceived consequences for it being down. Either its because it wasn't needed or you've just been lucky up till now. It comes down to stakeholders and leadership.
Undisciplined operations don't suddenly turnaround at 21% failure. 20% failure begets 30% failure.
Let's define "Large system". Let's say it's >>250 cameras.
Let's define "non-functional". I think it means "no video and no explanation". I think if you had a huge system with complex challenges you could have up to 10% "non-functional" but I would like to think most of those have trouble tickets filed. I think you should have 5% or less "non-functional" where that's news to the system operator.
GE ran MobileView in CTA in Chicago will less than 1% failure at any given time I believe. We run a large school systems bus video and have less than 1% after they let us spend more on the install do to it right. The school stated that every incident is worth 1 Million so every camera in every bus had better be working. The entire system serves no purpose if you constantly have product failing. At the same time, the client has to pay to have it done right and then have a reasonable maintenance budget.
If you are doing remote guarding Misses of 20% due to just camera failures is unacceptable. One should also check (at night) scene illumination, camera view, analytics ROI and ROD on a periodic basis (nightly and weekly) depending on site type.