Elmira Housing Authority, New York
Wireless solution enables video surveillance capabilities to secure the safety of Elmira Hoffman Plaza residents

“We can do less canvassing of neighborhoods as all activity is now recorded digitally. This will result in cost savings for the District Attorney’s office and th” courts as it’s hard to argue with visually recorded evidence.” Scott Drake, Elmira Police Chief

About Elmira Housing Authority
The Elmira Housing Authority is the Public Housing Authority (PHA) for the City of Elmira, located in the Southern Tier region of New York. It is comprised of three developments: Hoffman Plaza, George E. Bragg Towers, and Edward Flannery Apartments. Hoffman Plaza provides public housing for low-income families and is composed of 144 family apartments, single and two-story units. Elmira Housing Authority was organized under the laws of the State of New York in 1942.

About Integrated Systems
Integrated Systems is an established provider of information technology services to the government and industry business sector since 1983. Integrated Systems provide information technology consulting, management and planning services, system integration, information network design, and development and installation for both voice and data communications. Integrated Systems provide their clients in western and central New York with hardware and software management tools as well as business planning analysis and engineering services.

The Challenge
The Elmira Housing Authority wanted to provide community broadband to the Southern Tier of New York. The challenge facing Elmira Housing Authority was to find a reliable, yet cost-effective solution to better protect the residents and neighborhood of Hoffman Plaza by deploying a wireless video surveillance solution that would support multiple cameras and sites.

The Solution
Integrated Systems designed and deployed a wireless network using wireless access infrastructure for point-to-multipoint (PtMP) connectivity to the video surveillance cameras and point-to-point (PTP) backhaul to the control center. Additonally, digitized video streams are transferred to any location in the world enabling video monitoring and recording from anywhere on the network.

Elmira_video_surveillance2The Results
The network has increased the security for the residents of Hoffman Plaza and the Elmira Housing Authority installation won the NATOA Honorable Mentions for Community Broadband Awards for 2009. The broadband network covers the entire Hoffman Plaza development with a secure wireless signal that allows the viewing and recording of all activity on the property. Collection sites that consist of a radio subscriber unit and one or more cameras were deployed in areas where problems have been reported. The recorded images are used by Elmira City Police to view incidents and identify suspects. Using the recorded images enables the police to spend less time canvassing the area for suspects, saving time and associated costs to investigate the incidents.