The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, perceiving a growing need to protect the nation’s waterways, looked to technology companies for an alternative to the current and costly process involving gates and gun patrols. For one such application, Corps leaders turned to VistaScape Security Systems of Atlanta.
The Army Corps has adopted SiteIQ software from VistaScape Security Systems to oversee and protect dam facilities, in addition to related resources, along the Savannah River in South Carolina. Its implementation of VistaScape SiteIQ wide-area surveillance software is intended to neutralize such threats to the critical waterway as terrorism, theft, vandalism, and trespassing.
SiteIQ provides USACE personnel with a graphical view of roughly a 50-square-mile area of property, as well as detects, tracks, and classifies objects it finds in that locale.
The program streams to the user’s display live video of an alarm event, such as when an object violates a Corps policy. Additionally, SiteIQ is capable of informing law enforcement personnel of the potential problem via wireless alerts.
Whereas many of the nation’s more than 75,000 dams are policed by way of guards, guns, and gates, the Army Corps took an automated, remote software approach, which proved to be less costly and less conspicuous.
Remote Technologies of Savannah, Ga., served as the project’s security integrator. For more information, visit www.vistascape.com.
