The NSW Police Force has recently written to all alarm monitoring centres to advise them of important new guidelines when requesting police attendance to alarms (see accompanying Schedule.)

This initiative is designed to help focus available police resources on attending genuine/potentially serious incidents. NSW Police Force alarm response guidelines can be broadly summarised as follows:

1. NSW Police Force policy is, in the main, to respond to all reported ‘hold-up’ alarms deploying warning activation devices.

2. A reported ‘hold-up’ alarm must: (A) relate to a Schedule 1.1 customer and (B) must have installed a purpose manufactured security activation device that can only be triggered by two deliberate independent actions (in order to avoid accidental activation).

3. Any monitoring centre that reports ‘hold-up’ alarms to NSW Police Force and fails to comply with the above two specific requirements will be in breach, and will risk prosecution by NSW Police under Section 474.18 of the Criminal Code Act 1995.

4. NSW Police Force will respond to Schedule 1.2 & 1.3 reported duress alarms that the monitoring centre believes are genuine. However:

5. All other alarms (e.g. all Schedule 2) must be verified before calling police, typically by a phone call to the premises or emergency contacts, remotely monitored video verification, or by customer or mobile patrol visual verification. Otherwise:

6. Police response to all other reported alarms other than Schedule 1.1 alarms will be to prioritise and attend as and where possible based on workload at the time, and not deploy warning activation devices.

7. Police will also not respond to any reported alarm (including a ‘hold-up’ alarm) unless the name of the nearest cross street is provided.

While NSW Police Force is aware and mindful of legal and operational complexities resulting from monitoring centre/bureau relationships, they will not accept these as justification for ongoing non-compliance.

Australian Security Industry Association Limited

Commercial Flood Lighting covers a broad category of applications, including car parks, container terminals, storage areas, airport facilities and many other general situations. Low maintenance robust fixtures and efficient long life light sources are paramount to good commercial floodlighting design.
Rexel Lighting utilising the latest in lamp technologies, Rexel Lighting offers a wide range of quality flood lighting products that will meet your indoor and outdoor lighting requirements

REXEL

Sports Flood Lighting provides the community with the opportunity to extend sporting activities, and leisure time throughout the year. The use of design expertise, the right fixture and lamp technology means that many sporting venues such as tennis courts and major football stadiums, can be successfully lit to required standards.

REXEL

Architectural Flood applications cover both modern and historic buildings, creating special problems for the designer, such as fixture location, colour rendering and illumination levels. Compact aesthetically pleasing fixtures, offering a range of light sources and beam distributions are required to successfully provide the solutions.

REXEL

Closed circuit television (CCTV) has been included in this document partly because it is often in competition with street and other public lighting for government crime-prevention funding. For 1996 through 1998, more than three quarters of spending by the UK Home Office on crime prevention was for CCTV systems (Welsh and Farrington 2002, p 44 [116]). Another reason is that it also has its own lighting requirements.

The last decade of the twentieth century saw a rapid rise in the deployment of video surveillance, despite concerns about civil liberty and increasing imaging capability (Honess and Charman 1992 [45]). Existing cameras need artificial light to operate properly at night. Vermeulen (1992) [114] showed that a charge-coupled-device (ccd) video camera with a typical good quality objective lens required a scene luminance of 26 lux for excellent picture quality.²⁴The required values depend on the type of lamp in use.

Video cameras and high-pressure sodium lights were installed at metropolitan railway stations in Melbourne about a decade ago (Carr and Spring 1993 [18]). The luminaries used are fully shielded (ie, confining the directly emitted light to the horizontal direction and below), but generally both the direct glare from the lights and the lit surfaces of the station tend to be unpleasantly bright by comparison with illumination in most of the surrounding area. Adjacent car parks for rail travellers are also over lit with semi cutoff high-pressure sodium lamps, which are much worse as sources of glare.

A photometric survey²⁵of two of the stations and one of the adjacent car parks indicated that the horizontal luminance in the car park and bus shelter ranged from 25 lux to 71 lux. On station ramps and platforms, the range was 88 lux to 452 lux, with a typical value of about 300 lux, over ten times brighter than Vermeulen found to be sufficient for use with CCTV, and also over ten times brighter than is required to reduce fear of crime to near daylight values (Boyce et al. 2000 [14]).

The glare and steep illumination gradients cause visibility losses in the vicinity, particularly for elderly persons and others with increased intraocular light scatter. It would appear difficult to separate overbright lighting and presence of the cameras in any attempts to assess effects on crime and fear of crime.

For video camera installations in general, attempts at cost cutting might increase the need for bright lighting because brighter scenes allow the video camera lenses to be operated with smaller aperture stops (numerically larger f-numbers). This allows the use of cheaper lenses as prime cost items, but imposes greater prime costs for light fittings and greater operating costs for electricity. The desire for sharp images over a greater range of distance could also lead to demands for brighter lighting because smaller aperture stops give increased depth of focus at the cost of dimmer images.

Note that for a given amount of illumination from a high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamp, about 25 % more light is required from a low-pressure sodium (LPS) lamp for the same picture quality (Vermeulen 1992 [114]). HPS is more effective because it is richer in red and near-infrared radiation for which the ccd image sensors are relatively much more sensitive than the eye is.

Astronomical Society of Victoria, Inc., Australia

Boyce and Rea (1990) [13] used low-pressure sodium lamps and high-pressure sodium lamps with street lighting and floodlighting distributions along with rural moonless darkness in an experiment where alerted `guards’ had to detect and recognise `intruders’ walking along a path or moving so as not to be seen in a large open area. Lighting was mostly better than darkness for detection and recognition, but there was little difference between floodlighting and darkness in the open area task. There was no disadvantage for low-pressure sodium lamps in detection or in face recognition, but a (reasonable) caution not based on the results at hand was given against its use when colour recognition could be important. Recognition was better with the more diffuse light distribution (street lighting). Vertical plane luminances of between 4 and 10 lux were recommended for security lighting installations to give a high level of detection and recognition. The desirability of limiting light spill was not mentioned.

This experiment gave the greatest possible advantage to the guards and the greatest possible disadvantage to the intruders. For instance, the guards had the lights above and behind them, while the intruders had to move towards these intense glare sources. Reversed lighting direction relative to the intruder and guard positions must also occur in practice but it was not mentioned let alone subject to investigation. Nor is this the only practical case in which lighting will tend to aid intruders more than it hampers them. Most security-lit areas are not under continuous surveillance by guards, and prospective intruders may be able to time their incursions appropriately, in which case the lighting may then be a distinct advantage.

The recommended luminances are doubtless accepted by the security lighting industry as impeccable scientific guidance. Regardless, far brighter installations are commonplace in many developed countries. Presumably, more is considered better, with the excess dependent on how much extra the client can be induced to pay for.

The situation is changing somewhat with the increasing use of sensor-operated lighting and CCTV systems. Nevertheless, security lighting remains in widespread use, signalling the presence of valuable items and ready to assist lawbreakers when there are no police or security personnel close by.

Astronomical Society of Victoria, Inc., Australia

THE WORLD’s first marine  has released a new range of products that eliminate the need for keys securely using fingerprint technology.

 

The products in combination will cater for cabin entry, power switching including battery isolation and engine starting.

 

According to the company, the technology has been developed specifically for use on boats, and have been designed with the marine environment in mind

Security Industry News

Because C-Tick labelling is optional for incandescents, suppliers that choose to label the products must comply with compliance level 1 and hold a completed Declaration of Conformity (DoC) and a product description. The labelling of incandescents is not mandatory because they are deemed to fulfil the requirements of the standard without further testing

Australian Communications and Media Authority

Electric lighting products, such as incandescents and their luminaires, ferro-magnetic (fluorescent lighting) and electronic ballasts that connect to low voltage mains electricity supply or battery operated fall within the scope of AS/NZS CISPR 15. The international standards that are equivalent to AS/NZS CISPR 15 are CISPR 15 or the European EN 55015.

ACMA has made mandatory the emission (radiated and conducted) of radiofrequency disturbances from all lighting equipment with a primary function of generating or distributing light intended for illumination purposes. Products include UV and IR radiation equipment, neon advertising signs, street/flood lighting intended for outdoor use and transport lighting as installed in buses and trains.

All two and three phase AC electrical mains connected lighting equipment, battery powered and DC powered lighting equipment must also comply with the EMC regulatory arrangements.

Depending on the risk of interference from the product, compliance level 1 or 2 will apply. Most electrical and electronic products (or 90 per cent of the products supplied in Australia) are covered by the EMC regulatory arrangements and fall under compliance level 2. Most lighting equipment will be under compliance level 2 except incandescent lights which are compliance level 1.

Compliance level 1 applies to only simple low risk devices; a handheld ordinary torch with an incandescent bulb is level 1 while a battery operated handheld fluorescent torch will fall under compliance level 2.

Australian Communications and Media Authority