Washington Township School District — US

Washington Township School, New Jersey, is a comprehensive community public school district comprised of 11 schools from kindergarten through to the twelfth grade. The district is well prepared to combat threats of violence. Keith Neuhs, the superintendent of Washington Township said, “Even though we live in a rural community in Northern New Jersey, we couldn’t rely on the familiar attitude that a school shooting would never happen here. If you look at all the incidents of violence nationwide, most occur in rural communities similar to here where people assume low security standards. You can’t eliminate things completely, but we’ve tried to minimize the chances of something bad happening to our students.” The Washington Township board has always worked hard to enhance security and finally decided to establish the most technologically advanced security system for student and employee safety.

After much consideration, Hanwha Vision’s video surveillance cameras, including the Wisenet X, P and Q series, have been deployed throughout buildings and around perimeters to provide full coverage of entrances, exits, hallways, gymnasiums, cafeterias, playgrounds, as well as the car line and the streets and sidewalks surrounding the school.

Wisenet X series XNV-6020R IR vandal dome cameras were installed on exterior doors, while XNF-8010RV IR fisheye cameras, boasting complete wrap-around view, were set up along the buildings exterior. Its IR support provided clear image monitoring 24/7 even during the darkest of night, and the X series also boast incredible onboard analytics such as intelligent video analytics (appear, disappear, loitering) and sound classification (explosion, glass breakage, gunshot and scream detection) in conjunction with the video management system (VMS) offered by Hanwha Vision. This VMS enables Washington Township’s administrators, security resource officers and local law enforcement full access to the system for routine monitoring and in the event of an emergency. Thanks to this, all users can fully leverage the onboard analytics features that make high-efficiency monitoring possible. These cameras also send immediate 911 alerts in connection with the access control solution when a gunshot is detected, which triggers the school to go into a lockdown mode; strobe lights are set off throughout the building; emergency notification alerts are sent to administrators at the school and in the district.

Hanwha Tehciwn’s Wisenet P series PNM-9020V multi-sensor panoramic cameras have also been installed along the building exteriors. Equipped with four 2MP sensors, it enables 180° monitoring with the use of just one camera. Thanks to this feature, it smoothly stitches all images obtained by the four high resolution sensors into a single image, which is incredibly effective for wide area monitoring. By providing an incredible amount of coverage with one single camera, it cuts down installation cost and saves money for the school district.

This project in partnership with the access control solution has resulted in a state-of-the-art video monitoring and recording solution that includes gunshot detection and immediate 911 notification in the event of a school shooting. Neuhs said that “Our school board and I were most impressed with Hanwha’s X series cameras because of the robust analytics they offer, including an important gunshot detection feature. In-camera audio analytics like gunshot and glass break detection are unique to Hanwha technology. We are very secure compared to most schools.”