The East Bay is one of the largest and most populous portions of the Bay Area and is home to millions of people and thousands of businesses – including vast container shipping facilities at the Port of Oakland, manufacturing, healthcare facilities, and a wide array of service offices and small businesses. Securing East Bay Businesses requires much of the same technology and hardware as businesses in the South Bay and Peninsula with a few variations specific to the region.
Securing Large Warehouses With Commercial Security Camera Systems
The East Bay is home to thousands of warehouses and manufacturing plants, from up and down the coast in Oakland, Richmond and San Leandro to the furthest reaches of Contra Costa County.
Warehouses and plants are large, open structures, and require much more coverage than smaller office buildings or storefronts – which often dictates the need for a variety of cameras in order to cover all angles and eliminate blind spots. Both wide-angle cameras and PTZ cameras can be strong options for this.
Wide-angle cameras placed at corners and intersections inside the building can cover larger areas and fields-of-view with fewer cameras, as can PTZ cameras – which can be controlled manually to scan large areas or programmed to follow preset scanning patterns and custom paths. Using built-in software, PTZ cameras are also capable of being programmed to follow and track certain individuals on the property who may be of interest.
Constant monitoring of warehouses and plants in the East Bay can be extremely beneficial for employee productivity and accountability, helping businesses ensure processes are being properly carried out and implementing new ones to improve efficiency.
Warehouses and plants often have tall ceilings, which makes camera placement more challenging and installing wiring complex; a lift must often be used to run wiring and conduit across the interior ceiling. Covering an entire warehouse interior and exterior can also require massive amounts of wiring.
Outdoor Security Camera Systems For Commercial Properties
The same principles used to secure the interior of a warehouse or plant applies to the exterior perimeters, too – as well as open industrial areas such as shipping ports. Vast industrial sites have a lot of ground that must be covered, and an assortment of PTZ cameras and wide-angle security cameras can be the first step to ensuring complete coverage all-around.
The demands of weather in the East Bay – extreme heat and sun during summer and heavy rains all winter – means that cameras placed outdoors must be prepared to handle all weather types. In most cases, this means rugged outdoor security cameras with heavy-duty metal casings that are IP-rated for waterproofness and dustproofness. Waterproofness is important for cameras placed down by the bay, too, where constant morning fog means a humid environment, even during drier months.
License Plate Reader Cameras for East Bay Businesses
Industrial facilities are likely to have many vehicles coming and going, often at all hours of day and night. Whether this means commercial vehicles or passenger cars belonging to both employees or visitors LPR’s allow you to keep an accurate record of who is entering and exiting your facility.
License Plate Reader cameras can be vital to ensuring constant security while keeping track of many vehicles. By verifying the license plate number against a whitelist (or blacklist), LPR cameras can double-check that every truck coming to loading docks is expected – helpful for overnight deliveries.
They can do the same with checking passenger vehicles too, ensuring that only permitted vehicles are parked on premises. If a vehicle is caught on camera during a break-in or act of vandalism, the LPR camera can be used to track them down.
Paired with video analytics, LPR cameras can also be used to detect and alert when vehicles have entered restricted zones (as laid out virtually in the analytics program).
How Can Analytics Help?
The most effective way to bolster the effectiveness of either LPR cameras, PTZs or regular security cameras, is with video analytics. Analytics software comes integrated into many security cameras or installed in video management systems and allow the security camera system to take on a proactive role.
If a warehouse or manufacturing plant is closed off after a certain hour every day, analytics can detect anybody attempting to enter the area and can immediately alert the appropriate people, or trigger audio messages to sound over network speakers. They can also be programmed to recognize select personnel, allowing them to enter or wander the premises as needed while still alerting to any unwanted or unrecognized people who wander onto the property.
Security Cameras For East Bay Healthcare Facilities
The East Bay is home to a number of healthcare facilities, some of which are among the largest employers in the region. Securing a hospital or healthcare office requires following many of the same principles as covering a warehouse or office building, mainly using wide-angle cameras and PTZ cameras to monitor wide fields-of-view and large areas at once.
Hospitals will also likely want to make greater use of analytics than other facilities might. Visitor access control is vital to these facilities, and analytics and facial recognition can help security systems instantly and intelligently sort out who is allowed in areas or facilities inside the building and who isn’t – increasing and fortifying the security a physical access control system provides.
