Devices
DeterTech – Protecting Water Utility – UK Case Study
DeterTech (previously know as The SmartWater Group) is an award-winning risk management company in the UK that uses proprietary technology-based solutions to deliver material cost savings for their clients. We are operating nationally in the infrastructure, construction, vacant property and other sectors, across a range of security products and services.
Protecting drinking water reservoir hatches
Our customer Severn Trent Water is a water and wastewater service provider, servicing over 8 million customers across the heart of the UK. It is traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company is based in Coventry, England, and operates a number of reservoirs.
Due to often remote nature of the sites, with limited/no power and bandwidth, traditional CCTV systems were often not viable due to costs.
To overcome this, SmartWater installed SmartRecon (Reconeyez) systems at over 50 high-risk sites. Thanks to the quick install capability and the battery-powered nature of equipment, the installation programme was completed in several weeks.
Some of many Severn Trent water hatches
There are many threats to water hatches we need to avoid
Potable water hatches need to be secured at all times. To ensure the correct response is triggered following an alarm, false alarms and genuine attacks need to be distinguished.
The SmartRecon system provides visual verification analysed by Artificial Intelligence, filtering out false alarms. This improves incident response and reduces operation overheads.
Why did we choose Reconeyez?
● Due to the rural nature of the sites, getting power to the sites as well as internet communications with a good bandwidth for CCTV would have been expensive and complex to install and maintain.
● The system needed to be battery-powered which could send timely footage back to their Alarm Receiving Centre.
● The system has a regular heartbeat to ensure devices are working correctly and communicating. This feature was especially
important due to the critical nature of the sites.
● Reduction of costs in terms of time and money compared to hardwired CCTV. We were able to install the cameras to 50+ sites in just a matter of weeks.
● Thanks to the visual verification, the client can see what is happening on the site. Follow an alarm trigger on the site, the Alarm Operator can immediately monitor the site and escalate the incident accordingly.
Although birds cause movement in front of the camera, the AI understands that there is no actual threat (Real footage from Reconeyez Cloud)
There were several benefits for us and our customer
- Quick and easy installation.
- Saved time and money, less responses to false alarms on remote sites.
- Additional image based information captured and sent back to the Alarm Receiving Centre within seconds, thus speeding up any interventions required at the site.
Intruder detected (Real footage from Reconeyez Cloud)
Did we consider any alternatives?
CCTV was considered, but was expensive and complex due the requirement of a power source and the transmission of high levels of data.
