Blog Post 1: Project Proposal

Security Camera Coverage Mapping of Siena College Campus.

Matthew Prock
Siena College
GIS Course Project
02/13/2019

Introduction:

Top priority public safety on any college campus should be to make sure their students are safe from harm as they go through their day. As times change, threats continue to increase on college campuses world-wide making it important for security to change with it and become up to date. Security cameras are crucial to allow public safety officer to observe what is going on at a different location at real-time. With enough security cameras you are able to monitor throughout the day, a vast area from a desk, keeping an eye out for threats or prohibited activities that may occur among students, and put an end to it before it may impact the students learning environment.

Developing a G.I.S. map that shows coverage of security cameras on the Siena College campus will allow public safety to better understand the areas they can and cannot see using cameras. This can also allow public safety to find the areas where they may need to install additional security cameras in order to maximize their effectiveness. Since security is such an important topic, creating a coverage map of security cameras in an area may increase the cameras and public safety officers effectiveness all together by allowing officers to see a greater majority of Siena College's campus.

Objectives:

Creating a map for Siena College's security cameras will help public safety officers have better surveillance and benefit students by making them more safe here on campus. Things that need to happen in order to make this map include...

- Figure out the existing data public safety has on their security cameras.

- Inspection of the security cameras on Siena College's campus.

- Map the coverage area of the camera selected.

- Evaluate the feasibility of mapping coverage area for other cameras within a chosen area.

- If time allows identify potential blind spots that may exist within the mapped security cameras.

Methodology:

If time allows analyzing each individual camera in a specific region on campus and mapping what you can see from it and all of the other areas, building, or walkways will allow for a coverage map to be designed in ArcGIS. Public safety can then use that map to better the safety on the college campus. Safety on college campus is very important to people even before they decide to go to a school and it is important for Siena College to have state of the art safety for the sake of their students.

Data Sources:

“Access and Security.” Siena College, www.siena.edu/offices/public-safety/access-and-security/.

Geographic Information Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. Information Science Reference, 2013.

GIS Integration with Public Safety Applications - Esri. www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/gis-integration-public-safety.pdf.

“Surveillance Camera Clip Art.” CLKER FREE Clipart, www.clker.com/clipart-surveillance-camera-.html.

Work Plan:

Feb 11-15: Finalize proposal, meet in office-hours and have a meeting with public safety

Feb 18-22: Begin finding mapping cameras around siena college

March 2-6: Start creating map, or camera coverage

March 4-8: catch up week, continue developing map, see if additional cameras can be analyzed

March 11-15: catch up week, continue developing map, see if additional cameras can be analyzed

March 18-22: Finish map, show areas where cameras cover and where cameras are absent

April 25-29: Begin formatting poster, use Powerpoint to upload map and text in

April 1-5: Work on poster

April 8-12: Finalize poster

April 15- 19: Submit poster

Deliverables:

- Provide public safety with a GIS map that contains mapped security camera area(s).